


In the Bleak Mid-winter

by Dardrea



Series: In the Bleak Mid-winter [1]
Category: The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: AU, But Canon was Pretty Dark, But Van and Stef Do Damn It, Can You Tell I Feel Guilty?, Canon Gay Relationship, Everybody Lives, Fix-It of Sorts, For a Fix-It This Got Dark, I Don't Think it's Darker Than Canon, M/M, Mind the Archive Warnings Though, Not Too Graphic (I Don't Think), Okay Absolutely Everyone Doesn't Quite Live, Rape, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-11 15:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 54,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12937779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: Young Stefen gets wind that some fancy lady dressed all in red is looking for a street singer and manages to avoid her--and isn't ever taken to Haven. He has a much rougher time of it and he and Van only meet later, after the other Herald-Mages are killed and Vanyel is heading north to finally face his country's unknown enemy.(This has nothing to do with Christmas, but it is bleak and winter-y and Christmas songs are...you know, pervasive this time of year.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to suchadearie for the encouragement and macabre_monkey for the encouragement and beta-ing! ^_^

Stefen had always known the danger around him. He wouldn’t have lasted as long as he had on the streets, in the gutter, if he hadn’t developed a nose for trouble early.

The dreamerie old Berte insisted on losing herself in, that was trouble, for all that he continued to pay for it with his songs. Not like he had a choice. But he could smell the danger in it, see it in her foggy eyes and lax mouth when she was strung out again. Not just the danger of the blows she’d land when she was sore and sick the next day, if he didn’t start singing it away quick enough, not even just the danger of going hungry when she spent all they had on her next fix, and not even the danger of what would happen to him, small and young and friendless, if his only protector passed from the dreaming stupor of her addiction into the dreams that don’t end.

He’d never have said he’d _loved_ Berte. He knew she wasn’t his ma, or any other kin to him, she’d never said otherwise and for as long as he’d remembered the very idea that he could even have had a real family was so foreign to him that when he got old enough to know that most folk did, he still couldn’t imagine being part of one himself. But she was his still, and he was hers, and there was a belonging there was all he’d ever known.

She was old, though he wasn’t sure how old, and he fancied she was probably younger than she looked. Hunched over, in her rags, with her rheumy eyes and phlegmy cough, and palsied, bone-thin arms and hands held out for alms, she looked like she could blow away in the first hard wind, but, like many things, Stef had learned young, her looks were deceiving.

She was still quick as a snake when she needed to be, and meaner’n one, with two long, thin daggers she kept hidden in her clothes. No one pushed around old Berte, who wouldn’t pay for it in blood, quick, excepting maybe the guards, but she was canny enough to keep out of their path and anyway, they didn’t usually bother with the parts of town where her and her sort hung out.

She’d cuff Stef soon as not and send him sprawling in the dust, blood on his face, for any fuss from him, real or imagined, but while she and her stickers were close no one else dared rough him up too much and that was more safety than a street rat like him hoped for.

She got even more protective when his singing started turning a profit. He was a real _commodity_ then, he knew, a fancy word for a fancy new chance at life. She stayed real close for a while, kept a nasty eye on the street toughs that were never far from him, and showed her stickers a few times just in warning.

For a while it meant something almost close to a full belly and sometimes a warm blanket at night. For a while it meant nestling in beside her and though it wasn’t ever _loving_ it was more and softer contact than he was used to and arms around him in the night was almost like she cared.

The days had a dirty feel to them, always, back then. The blue sky was maybe the only clean thing he thought he ever really saw in his part of town and that was so far away it didn’t seem any more real than the nobles he and some of the other boys would sometimes see come slumming it—never as far as _their_ turf though, never across the fouled river, polluted by the uptown waste and stinking its way through his streets.

They weren’t real people to him. Their lives weren’t real. He couldn’t shake the feel that at some point they’d cross a bridge on the other side of town and shake off their pretty togs and old Berte’s twin wouldn’t crawl out from underneath somehow, cackling like she did at putting it over on some rube, only _they_ were putting on the whole world with their airs.

But Stef wasn’t an innocent. He knew what, like as not, the fancy folk were risking coming so close to his dirty life for. Sometimes it was dreamerie, sure, or its like. Pure poison, but if it kills you slow enough you’ll never even know it and it’s sweeter going down that some things. But he knew what the “big houses” held, too big for this part of town, almost fancy, but dirty, dirty, _dirty_ with it.

There was a fatalism to knowing what went on in there. The girls that grew up around him knew where they’d end up one day or another. Pretty-faced boys too. And even if you meant to not live your life there, those squalid buildings that still managed to be too big and too much for everything that skulked around them, cast long shadows.

Pride didn’t pay nothing. But a stuffy toff from the other side of town might, if you was pretty enough, or young enough, or squealed and bucked just right. Would you be in a good enough state when it was over to use your take? If the gaudy dressed—but gods, so _dirty_ —men and women who ran the places even let you keep enough, after you paid them for the room and the set up with the customer…probably. Most seemed to think it was worth it, if not exactly the stuff of dreams, at least it meant maybe not starving, maybe keeping a home, such as it was, or keeping a young one or an oldster fed a bit longer if that was your goal.

* * *

It wasn’t long after things changed with his singing, after life got a little better, that he managed to skip Berte’s grip and go awandering, too young and wild a thing to be kept on a leash for long, even if he’d squirmed his way out of her arms that sunrise and was feeling a little more…oddly, mellow or human or _something_ for it.

Thieving wasn’t a thing to fall back on in the slums, it was a way of life, ordinary and instinctive as calling blessings on a sneeze. Which isn’t to say he’d had mind for trouble that day, but it found him anyway, in Sewer Janne, a big, ugly boy with small eyes and a small heart and possibly even less of a chance than Stef had had, with a ma who worked at the big house and had started bringing him with her young, till he grew out of his baby face and she’d left him to his own on the streets, no use to her or the fancy folk like he was.

Janne wasn’t much good to himself either, slow in wit and body, and Stef had used him as a distraction a few weeks earlier, when the clumsy older boy had gone to pinch an apple from a stand that sold cast-offs too near to spoiling, but for less and good enough for those who had naught otherwise.

Stef had pointed him out to Mercader, who’d been running the stand, and while the man had collared the other boy, Stef’d snagged three potatoes for himself.

They’d been half rotten, every one, and the last had had a worm.

They were better than Janne got though, another day with an empty belly and a beating that left him limping a little still as he ran Stef down through the narrow streets like a bull being driven to market.

Stef was quicker, and not limping, and he knew the streets like he knew the spots on the back of Berte’s hand, so he wasn’t worried, not even when a covey of nuns from the local temple—screechy, pious, prigs—made him lose time while they blocked the street and preached to the “poor and needy,” as though their words wouldn’t have gone down better with coin or good bread.

But when he turned in the alley behind the pawnshop and the usurer he found his way blocked by a stack of barrels, a stolen shipment of ale or beer to his eye and worth a fortune to whoever’d snagged them, but not hardly worth Stef’s skin in his own mind.

Quick as the rat he knew himself to be he’d leapt at them, scrambling for the top, hoping to make it over before—

The world spun and the earth itself slammed across his spine and the back of his skull like a hammer.

He blinked up at Janne through a veil of starbursts and black spots. The boy grinned triumphantly, his hand still outstretched, some of Stef’s own overlong red hair twined in his meaty fingers from where he’d brought Stef down by his collar, not caring whatever else was caught in his grip.

“ _I’ll_ show you how to sing, songbird,” Janne sneered, and Stef, still in a daze, wondered how long the other boy had been working on that threat.

Then he grunted and curled in on himself as Janne kicked him, very _very_ hard, right in the gut.

It was far from the first time Stef had been caught for a beating and he knew the way of it, how to turn when he could, to give a softer, less vulnerable target. A kick to the arse or the thigh might hurt like hell but if he could deflect the blows there it was better than a broke rib or bruised kidney.

It wasn’t fair though. It wasn’t his fault Janne was slow and stupid and an easy mark.

“Son of a whore!” he hissed and then was sent reeling again from a kick directly to the underside of his jaw that slammed his head back and his teeth together so hard he heard a crack—terrified for a moment it was his jaw itself—and it left him blinking at stars again.

It was so painful that it disguised the tearing grip of Janne’s fist back in his hair as the larger boy used it to drag him up against the wall.

“What did you say?” he snarled, figurative blood in his eye, or literal blood in Stef’s own eye, just then he couldn’t have told.

It was a stupid insult. Pointless, so common the words hardly had meaning. But Janne’s barrel chest heaved and he panted with fury and Stef was streetwise enough to go for a weak spot when he saw it, and twist the knife when he knew he’d hit home. “Son. Ova. Whore,” he enunciated slowly.

He was braced for the blow that came at him, a right-handed swat that knocked his body free of Janne’s grasp and sent him tumbling to the side, sliding against the wall of the alley. He was panting himself when he landed, a careful eye on his tormentor as he gathered his wits and tensed.

“What the hells do you know about anything?”

Stef hissed, using the sound to release some of the pain, clear his own head, as he shifted a little at Janne’s feet. “I know where your ma comes from every day, early, near sunrise. I know where she used to take you, you weren’t so shite—”

“Shut up!” the boy said, in a voice that struck a strange note between a whisper and roar and resonated with a pain so deep Stef knew he should feel guilty. But _he_ was the one bleeding now and guilt was for fools and rich men with deep enough pockets for buying indulgences in the chapels.

“What? Do you miss it?” Another twist, and a cruel one, but Stef was ready for the next blow—ready to move with it, roll with it away from Janne and hopefully out of the alley, where he could get to his feet and run again.

He was the one surprised when the other boy’s face went blank instead, and he went stiff and still, reacting to more than just Stef’s words. Memory turning his beady eyes dark.

“You aren’t no better,” he said, low.

Stef laughed breathlessly. “Sure, sure, maybe not, but no one’s buggered me in one of the big houses yet.”

“Not yet!” Janne said, fiercely, leaning over him, but not kicking or hitting at him. “But don’t think it’ll be long. Your stupid songs may be keeping Berte quiet for now, but she’ll blow all you bring her on the dreamerie quick, and more besides. And then she’ll _sell you!_ Just like she sold her own young’uns.”

“That’s not true!”

Janne spat at him, but Stef was so enraged by his ridiculous words he didn’t react, other than to wipe at the dripping spittle on his cheek.

“S’Truth!” Janne answered, triumph stealing across his unpleasant face again. “My ma told me. And you’ll _wish_ she’d just sold you in the big house, too. Ma said Berte’s real kids disappeared with the north folk, one, two, three, on trading days, til there weren’t none left and she wouldn’t tell no one where they’d gone, nor look ‘em in the eyes about it. Old Sour Face’s so damned mean and so damned ugly, no one wanted to try long anyway but everyone knew what’d happened. And old Berte, she lived high on the hog after each one—for a while. Til the dreamerie run out and she di’n’t have no more kids to sell. But now she’s got _you_ , songbird.”

It would have been better to stay where he was, wait for his opening, but his fury forced him to his feet to glare at the bigger boy. _You’re no better than Janne, you shite-head, stay down and wait!_ the voice of reason screeched in his head, but he ignored it. Janne was just a rotten liar.

And yet he smirked, slow perhaps, but as driven by instinct to twist the knife as Stef was. “Wonder what sorta cage a pretty little songbird like you will end up in, huh?”

“Fuck you!” Stef shouted, suddenly hitting Janne as hard as he could, low, going for the kidneys with his bony knuckles.

Janne _oofed_ , and folded a bit, but Stef wasn’t fool enough to think he’d done more damage than he’d had. He ran, and the worst thing was that Janne didn’t follow and Stef knew it wasn’t because Stef’d hurt him, it was because he thought he’d won.

* * *

The hovel they’d stayed in the night before, rented for an exorbitant copper a night from a ‘friend’ of Berte’s, was dark when Stef went scampering back to it. The curtains were drawn.

“Oi, Berte! You out?” he called stupidly as he let himself in, pretending he couldn’t hear the thread of worry in his own voice.

Because he knew she wasn’t. The sick, sullen lump in his belly warned him even before the stench rolled over him. Dreamerie. More than she was used to using. But that was the problem, or one of them. The more you used the more you needed and the harder you’d crash when you came up out of it. The worse you felt, the more you’d need to get yourself back to rights and the harder you’d crash again. A cycle that only led in one direction for Berte, and, possibly, for Stef too.

But she shifted under the bulk of her rags at his entrance—and maybe at the fact that he’d left the door open and was allowing the cloud of drugged smoke to escape into the already poisonous air outside, and she turned towards him. In the morning there’d be curses and glares and heavy blows, harder than Janne’s, if he wasn’t careful and quick enough with the songs that eased her morning-after head. For now there was a vacant stare and an absent smile offered to nothing and no one in particular.

She looked younger like this, prettier almost, and it made him sick.

“Stef,” she murmured, startling him. She held out her arm and wiggled back a little on the threadbare pallet, as though making room for him to curl up for the night. But it was hardly past midday.

He quickly turned away and shut himself out of the one room shack, closing the door on her vacuous smile and the smoke that softened the edges of it from across the room. His eyes were blurry as he rested his forehead against the door and his chest heaved once, but he didn’t cry. Berte was stupid on dreamerie. Dull-witted as a…well, dull _er_ -witted than Janne.

He could skim a bit of the money he brought in, easy, if he got to it before she could spend it all. He could feed _himself_ while people still gave him berth for the sake of her knives. He could save up. By the time the dreamerie took her where she really wanted to go, he’d have enough to get out. He didn’t have any other choice.

* * *

It was all over the slums that a stranger was lurking about town. Poking her nose in the wrong sorts of places, and dressed in rich clothes of eye-catching scarlet, like she didn’t know no better than to make a spectacle of herself.

That was odd enough to have rumors flying—a spy for the crown? A spy for an enemy? Pah! What sort of spy couldn’t keep themselves hid better than that? A spell-caster? A Herald? That was daft, everyone knew Heralds did their prancing about in white and rode them big white horses. A Bard, for sure, t’was Bards that wore red like that—Stef didn’t know what a _Bard_ was and wasn’t going to ask. But Bards were money-grubbers, not that anyone could blame ‘em, but what’s a Bard want with the poor side of town? There’s no coin to be made here! A spy pretending to be a Bard—

Stupid, Stef thought, with the special condescension of the young. News of the unrest down south had everyone jumpy, but there wasn’t nothing important enough in their town to send a spy for, by Stef’s reckoning. Plenty of old soldiers had ended up there, parts of them missing, even the ones that _had_ all their limbs, looking to get lost like Berte did on dreamerie, but none of them were special, heroes or aught, not his side of the river.

But then he overheard Mercader gossiping with the pawnbroker that _he’d_ heard the stranger-in-red was asking about singers in their part of town. Looking for a little songbird, apparently, Mercader confided, and Stef had slunk further into the shadows, further away from the two men, heart racing.

She wouldn’t be looking for him, o’course. Why would she? He wasn’t nothing. But maybe he’d be best served keeping his yap shut and his song behind his teeth for a few days, just so. Even if someone ratted him out, and who was he kidding, _when_ someone ratted him out, good luck to her finding him if he wasn’t perched out on his usual corner with Berte’s hat out in front of him.

It wasn’t so easy convincing Berte of that and he couldn’t tell her why he wouldn’t sing for her—what if she had a mind to approach the richly dressed stranger to find out why the woman was looking for a songbird, and exactly what kind she might be willing to settle for? Instead he feigned a cold in his throat, croaking for her until his chest really did hurt with the strain of pretending it, and she’d cuffed him good and set him out of her sight with a kick and a fierce frown.

Three days he managed to keep out of sight and hearing of the stranger and in all that time it never occurred him what old Berte’s desperation would drive her to. So much for him recognizing danger when it was hunting him.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Van heads north.

The icy flurries flung against them by the wind weren’t cold enough to cool the fire of Vanyel’s rage.

His skin might have been so chilled he was probably turning blue— _like in the dream_ —but he felt feverish all the same, and in spite of a cold so deep his breath and Yfandes’ both turned to plumes of white vapor with every rapid exhalation, the snow that touched the exposed skin of his face seemed almost to sizzle as it vanished.

He wasn’t afraid of the snow now. Nor was it a refuge. It was just an obstacle, and a poor one, slowing them down from reaching the end of this road that he’d started on only the gods knew how long before.

But the dreams didn’t matter anymore, ForeSight or FarSight or fantasy, it made no difference to him now. All that mattered was that his aunt, his _mother_ by all but birth, had died alone and in fear and thinking he’d thought her no more than an old fool to be worried that something was coming for her.

All that mattered was that their last words together had been her asking him for help while he brushed her off. _Later_ , he’d said, and _as soon as I have the time_.

More than many he should have known how often ‘later’ never came. More than most he should have known to listen to her, as he so often had; trust her, as he so often had. Gods damn it all, he’d even had suspicions of his own and let himself be talked out of them, how dared he deny hers?

And how it could have gotten so far with no one noticing, no one but a single, canny old woman that suddenly no one would listen to? Even the Companions hadn’t noticed, or if they had they hadn’t said, but since the sense of fury and anguished failure echoed from his link to Yfandes’ thoughts, he didn’t believe they’d been keeping one of their mysterious silences on _this_.

He was the only one left; who else could still move against this mysterious enemy from the north, an enemy who had worked in secret and somehow managed to take down all the rest, every one of the Herald-Mages, down to his aunt, through her wards, through the guards and walls and wards of the Herald’s own compound at the capital, struck down in the very heart of Valdemar—

_:Not alone,:_ Yfandes pointed out, her voice fierce and almost mad. _:You do not go to face this alone. Whoever he is, whatever_ it _is. This thing that—:_ The words dissolved into a frantic, looping flood of images: Kellen, his Aunt Savil’s Companion, bloodied, dead, an obscene, absurd crimson staining the gleaming white of his hide. Shonsea, Lissandra’s Companion. Rohan, Kilchas’.

He let the images bombard him, let them fill him, melding seamlessly with his own last memories of Kilchas, Lissandra, and Savil.

By the merciful gods, _Savil_.

* * *

Yfandes’ mind may be as good as any human’s—and far, far, better than most—and her body as like the horse she appeared to be as one of the Tayledras bondbirds was like one of the plump pigeons that gathered in the square, but even she had her limits. Even with shared fury, shared anguish, echoing and reflecting and amplifying along the soul-deep link that bound them, her strong body still had an end to its endurance, and though the raging of the snow and wind might not stop them, it could slow even her, eventually.

He noted it the instant her impossible speed flagged, a good three days journey to the north by an actual horse’s pace, and felt a flash of impatience that faded instantly to concern.

He stroked her neck above the reins, offering instinctive gratitude and apology.

By the gods, would he ignore the needs of the last, closest person to him until she too was taken as a victim of his blind self-indulgence? He cursed himself to the deepest of the hells as a wave of crushing guilt crashed over him.

As she slowed yet more her hooves began to fall heavier on the thick blanket of snow beneath her, sinking in where before she’d practically sailed above it, until it began catching her legs and dragging at them.

Even her mind-voice was breathless. _:I’m not so weak as all_ that! _:_ she thought at him, something like affront in her tone and it was so…normal, he almost smiled. _:But I do need a break. And night is coming on. It’s dangerous even for me to try to keep going in this weather.:_

_:You’re right, of course. Rest and water and food, for both of us.:_ he told her, knowing she’d turn stubborn if he didn’t promise to take advantage of the same, no matter how leaden the lump already filling his stomach felt, or how frantically his blood still thrummed beneath his skin.

* * *

Even at a Companion’s pace it was a good fortnight from Haven to the northern border, hard days, grim and mostly silent. He didn’t dare stop at an inn, lest some spy of his unknown enemy get out a warning of his approach. He still had some hope of surprising him, though less since he’d shown his hand with the spectacle he’d made of the murderous mage’s construct, a violent show of power the mage who’d created the thing can’t have missed, but he couldn’t remember that with regret, no matter what it had revealed of him.

Instead, each night he’d carve out a little haven for them in the snow, warmed by magic, shielded against sight, both physical and magical. They’d drink fresh, melted snow, eat a bit from his light provisions and a bit from whatever he could forage or force into growth from under winter’s mantle, and sleep curled together in a way that they hadn’t since she’d first Chosen him and tried to comfort him through a broken lifebond that no person had any right surviving and few sane people would have wanted to.

He found himself thinking of that often as he and Yfandes moved northward, slowing a little each day to reserve both their strength for whatever they might find there and whatever might be required of them to answer it.

In all the years since he’d died, Lendel had never been far from Vanyel’s thoughts; he didn’t know how he could have been and he wouldn’t really have wanted it. And as he seemed to be riding into a dream that had haunted him his whole life, a dream of dying alone, in pain and grieving, blood on snow, and bitter, endless cold, he found himself wondering what it would be like when they finally met again.

Would his Tylendel still be the golden boy that Vanyel remembered, enshrined in his grieving heart? Or would the agonies of his last days and his final, terrible mistakes scar the youthful innocence of the boy he’d been?

But if he _was_ still that sweet, optimistic boy, what would he make of what Vanyel had become in the years since his death? Battle hardened and scarred. A killer a hundred times over and more. So unsentimental he could wish his own daughter to not marry her _own_ lifebonded because the boy was heir to the throne and a possible candidate for a political alliance.

The farther north they went, the deeper into the teeth of the endless rounds of winter storm, the farther from Haven, the closer to the border—the more certain he was that he and Tylendel would be able to discuss it all soon.

* * *

It was almost a relief, if they hadn’t both been so numb, when Yfandes and Vanyel finally reached the guardpost that marked the northern border.

Going beyond it uninvited, he’d lose the authority of Valdemar’s law and crown, but the enemy that waited for him there had had no care for either in all the years Vanyel now suspected he must have been working against them.

It was still snowing—gods, his nephew Medren’s complaints of the area were true, it seemed it never stopped!—while he led a grateful Yfandes into the warm stables and out of the storms for the first time in days.

There was time to re-provision, time to warm themselves and rest. Not much time, but it would probably be their last chance.

There was one stall set up for a Companion, large, well lit, warm, with a loose, light door she could easily open or close at her whim. Van would let no one else tend Yfandes, tired as he was, eager as the gawking stable lad was to help. The oat bin was empty so he sent the boy to the garrison itself for something better for her than hay while he finished her thorough rubdown.

By then the boy had returned and Van absently stroked her neck while she dug in greedily to the warm oats the boy had poured out into the feed trough, so tired he wondered if he wouldn’t be better off just curling up beside her for the night.

_:Don’t even think about it.:_ she warned sharply, but her next words were both more gentle and far more weary. _:Grab a bed while you can, dearest. Besides, you need to go speak to the captain and see if they know anything about whatever the hells is going on across the border.:_

He only grunted a brief sound of regret, muffled in her mane as he leaned against her, feeling all his years and more.

* * *

He did his best to stamp his boots free of snow as he swung his heavy cloak off and hung it in the snow room on his way inside.

The captain of the post was there to greet him with a smile too wide and genuine to bear in his current mood.

Fortunately, she was also canny enough to recognize he was in no fit state for talk and released him from his official duties after only the briefest pleasantries. He should do as Yfandes suggested and pump her for anything she might know of a mage that was working from across the northern border, but the questions could wait for the morning.

He must have looked as bad as he felt, because she clapped him on the back and guided him by a hand laid gently on his arm—like he was an old man she had brace up to keep him from falling, which perhaps wasn’t too far off, actually—to a common room where it seemed most of the soldiers who guarded the place were gathered. She pointed him to the huge, steaming, bubbling pot of something that smelled of herbs and venison set cooking over the great fireplace itself, and cheerfully announced that he was in luck to have visited them when their post was also hosting a wandering minstrel.

Vanyel had no interest in music now, only warm food and a bed, heading gratefully for the fire and the stew and the little loaves of bread he could see and smell warming in a metal shelf cut directly into the stone chimney.

He’d entered the room in a lull between songs, the air heavy with the expectant silence, but as he nodded to the soldier minding the pot and absently stirring the contents with a big wooden ladle, the first notes of a new song tumbled out through the air and he winced.

That it was no mere minstrel playing for them, he could tell with such immediate surety he was surprised the captain hadn’t known it as well and he slammed his mental barriers firmly into place, not looking to be swept away by Bard-song when he was already feeling so adrift.

The fury of his quest for vengeance had cooled on the long, cold trek to the border, and the beginnings of grief were edging in around it. He felt the lust for the mage’s death just as powerfully, the need like a sack of glass shards nestled in his chest, painful but so omnipresent the pain was dulled if he could just be still for a moment, but the grief that had been displaced by that burning purpose would not be put off much longer.

He took the bowl of soup and a spoon and the small loaf of herbed and buttered bread to the corner farthest from the Bard to eat. He had that corner to himself, since everyone else in the common room had moved closer to the source of the music, not away.

Without his shields he might have been cheered, perhaps even energized by the speedy, lighthearted little melody the Bard was picking out on his gittern, and that was before it was joined by the sweet tenor voice, backed by what was obviously, to Vanyel, a powerful Gift. The gittern that the Bard played was a poor instrument, in spite of the magic those talented hands roused from it, but the young man’s voice was a tool that few could equal.

For a moment Van cocked his head and considered the youth who commanded the room with such ease: ragged clothes, but warm ones, wavy auburn hair, a red-head’s pallor, eyes that he could only see were pale from his place across the room. Light brown perhaps, or hazel. A pretty young man, almost as lovely as his song. Pure trouble, if Van knew anything of Bards, or too-handsome young men.

Van sat his food on a convenient barrel-top table and set to his meal, only stopping several moments later when he was forced to stifle a yawn. When he opened his eyes he found the Bard’s own slumberous gaze fixed on him. For a moment he felt a strange chill, but he shook it off. It was a talent of truly good performers to make everyone in the audience feel like he or she alone had the musician’s particular attention. It was an especially valuable skill for performers who worked for tips.

Mind-shielded and deliberately tuning out the Bard’s song, Van focused instead on his food, allowing himself to be distracted by nothing except a young soldier bearing a fresh mug of ale, courtesy of the captain.

* * *

He made himself eat slowly, because he knew he wouldn’t take more than the bowl and loaf he’d already been given. A full belly would only make him stupid and slow—and possibly sick, the way he was feeling; he wasn’t starving, just tired of his own meager cooking and rations.

A soft touch mind-to-mind through his link to Yfandes told him she’d already fallen asleep, and though her dreams were troubled, she slept deeply.

He should be as well. Gods, even though they’d deliberately slowed themselves, trying not to burn themselves out before they could even reach this enemy of theirs, the storms had been taking their toll on them both. If he hadn’t been able to stop in the guard post for the night he wasn’t sure he’d’ve made it through another day, unless he started strapping himself to the saddle.

He’d be useless for his task if he didn’t manage to rest up. Perhaps they’d even stay another day, instead of striking out immediately. The dark mage would have to know they were coming but he couldn’t possibly predict exactly when. Two nights’ rest in the warmth and the comfort of a bed for him and a stable for Yfandes could give them an edge that was more valuable than haste.

“You look like a man who could use another,” a wry, teasing voice commented, before a new mug of ale was set in front of him.

He glanced up to find the Bard himself standing there—then sitting there, across from him, as he set down his own bowl and bread and another mug closer to his own hand.

Van gazed stupidly across the room to where the young man had been sitting while he sang, as though he expected the boy in front of him was some vision and the Bard was still in the place he’d been since Vanyel’s arrival.

As though catching the thread of his thought the handsome Bard pouted, the expression not ruining his face in the slightest. “You weren’t paying attention to my music _at all_. Was my playing so off tonight?”

Vanyel snorted, no more inclined to be caught up in flattering an undoubtedly already ample ego than he’d been to be caught up in the music. “I’m not a fan,” he said dismissively.

The boy’s face fell, and for a moment true hurt reflected in his eyes and twisted his mouth and Vanyel cursed himself. “—of music,” he added. “I don’t care for music.” He shrugged, lying easily. “I had dreams of being a Bard myself once. Some dreams die hard and leave a…bitter taste,” he added, finding the truth came easily as well, although he didn’t hold—much—bitterness against music or Bards or the Gift he had actually won in the end, at too terrible a cost to think about.

For a moment the youth examined his face, eyes particularly on the half-smile Van’d ventured as a peace offering, suspicion darkening his gaze, but then he twisted his lips and sighed and put his head down to start devouring his own meal.

“Looks like you did alright. Most’d think those Whites of yours are worth more than a pretty song, Herald,” he said between spoonfuls of the thick soup, not looking up, clearly not entirely having forgiven Van.

Just as well though. Vanyel wasn’t looking for friends, he’d left all his in Haven except Yfandes, and too many he’d left in lonesome graves dug in hard, winter earth. He reached for the ale the Bard had brought him and downed a long swallow. He shouldn’t drink any more tonight, no matter how it warmed him, but some memories all but demanded it.

The Bard did look up then, strangely watchful, seeming on the verge of saying something else, but he shoved another spoonful of soup into his mouth instead.

Van shook his head in weariness. He was used to the way Bards clung to Heralds, hungry for fodder for their songs, and he couldn’t blame them for it—it was their job after all—but he didn’t have the energy or heart to indulge the boy.

He took another long drink until the mug was half gone, and when he set the mug next to the two he’d already emptied he pushed away from the table.

That caught the Bard’s attention and Van had a strange double-vision of brown eyes and hazel, both watching him, while the room spun. Maybe he should have eaten more after all, or drank less, or both.

“Whoa—” the youth said softly, reaching for his arm, easing him back into his seat. “You look worn out. Don’t be so quick to move around, yeah? Another drink to steady your head?”

That made no sense. Instead he shut his eyes and breathed deeply through his mouth for several long, slow breaths. Ground and center, it was good practice for more than just magic.

He opened his eyes to find the Bard’s on him. Hazel eyes, definitely, turned golden amber in the firelight.

He smiled weakly. “I’m fine. I’ve just been on the road too long. I just need a good bed to fall into.”

And those words made the Bard lean round his side of the tabletop, closer to Van, and he put out his hand—on Vanyel’s thigh. “Now that’s a smart idea. But the beds up here are so cold…when you’re alone,” he murmured. His dark lashes fluttered low, casting sweet shadows on his cheeks, and though his flirting was suddenly as heavy-handed as any of the women Van’s mother had coached to try to tempt him from what his family considered ‘perversion,’ this was far closer to temptation than he’d faced in a long time.

_Gods!_

He scrambled for the mug and downed it all, twisting his leg away from the younger man’s touch with all the grace of a propositioned novice at a nunnery.

The Bard withdrew his hand from Van’s flailing efforts to escape, eyes narrowed in sullen pique. First he’d insulted the boy’s music, now he’d scrambled away from him like he feared the boy was plagued. Vanyel should probably feel bad about at least one of those things, but he couldn’t manage it.

The speed of his own movements or perhaps the sudden rush of the mild alcohol hitting his head or alarmed embarrassment or even just his weariness all combined to make the room spin again and he grabbed at the table to steady himself. He felt odd.

This was more than drink, he realized. His mouth worked but he found he couldn’t speak, his tongue like a stone, his throat unaccountably tight.

The Bard leaned into him again and he wanted to fend him off—couldn’t he see something wasn’t right?—but the world was growing farther away, as though something thick and viscous were suddenly seeping over him, too heavy to let him move, dulling his vision and his hearing. He was like an insect stuck in sap and the more he tried to struggle the worse off he seemed to be.

“Too good for the likes of me, hmm? That’s fine, better men than you have said the same, but better men than you have said otherwise, too. A man can’t win ‘em all, can he?” The Bard put his arms around him as he nuzzled his ear, whispering for only Van to hear. Someone at any distance would think they were flirting. More than flirting.

Van had no control of his own limbs but he felt the Bard “helping” him up, an arm curled around Vanyel’s waist, swinging Van’s arm over the youth’s own slim shoulders.

In a panic he reached for Yfandes—but found a wall. He flung all his considerable mental force against it, railed against it, screamed, but it was smooth as glass and strong as graven stone and remained utterly untouched by his fear or fury.

His Mage Gift and his Mind Gifts were as hopelessly closed off from him. He was helpless. He was trapped. And the only certainty he had as his world narrowed down to nothing more than his trapped and terribly _aware_ consciousness, was that somehow, the Bard had done this.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stefen's perspective and Vanyel goes further north.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stefen is a potty mouth.

Fucking hell, Stefen hated winter.

The little guard post was one of the nicer places he’d weathered the bitter northern storms at least, but he was so damned tired of the chill that penetrated right down to the bone every time he stepped outside, no matter how warmly he was dressed. The gray skies, the white everything else, the whole grim, drab, lifeless world, he was so sick of it all.

The cheer with which the soldiers stationed at the post greeted him was something like a balm to his soul though. He couldn’t deny he liked the appreciation, the warmth, the food, hells, the _bed_ , when he’d been more than willing to take a bedroll by the fire and be grateful for that much kindness.

He’d played for fancier audiences but rarely for one that was so admiring.

Nothing good lasts though, and the end to his peaceful interlude came with a rush of cuttingly cold wind, given entrance through an open door in the snow room. He couldn’t see it, but he felt it, though he gave it no mind until he saw who’d come in with the captain.

It was Master Dark himself.

It was a good thing he was between songs because not for love of gold or applause or life itself could have kept singing without faltering when he recognized that face; there was simply no mistaking it.

And yet…and yet.

Master Dark was vain and terrifyingly powerful, he’d never looked so ragged or so careworn. His hair was the unrelieved black of an obsidian blade; it had no streaks of silver. He’d never moved so stiffly and so painfully; his head had never bowed, weighed down with troubles; he’d never looked so…human. So human and so tired.

And he’d certainly never, never, _never_ been caught in so much as a scrap of white, though he often wore something that looked remarkably like the man’s gear, if it were dipped in ink.

Not Master Dark then, but his mirror somehow, and the Whites gave him away almost certainly as the person Stefen had been sent out to intercept: Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, of Haven, and of Forst Reach. Demonsbane. Shadow-Stalker. A number of other epithets, some flattering, some not, depending on which side of the Valdemar/Karsite border the story came from.

Stefen had expected him to be…bigger. Broader and brawnier, the way a hero ought to be. It was stupid. He’d come up with enough lyrics of his own, he should have known better than to pin his expectations on songs, but he had not expected a man hardly larger than himself, Master Dark’s pale shadow, silver in his hair and the scruff of a patchy beard on his cheeks and a weary glaze over his startlingly silver eyes.

He didn’t know what to make of it, the Herald’s similarity to Master Dark.

His audience was waiting and he pretended not to watch the Herald cross the room while he swept them into the next song.

* * *

It did occur to him that this might be easier with the Herald’s uncanny resemblance to Master Dark. As little love as Stefen had for his Master it should weigh far less on his conscience to do what he had to do to someone who looked so like him.

Except the longer he watched the man, setting on his meager meal with a forced care that spoke of pride and self-control—two vastly overrated qualities in Stefen’s opinion—the less he reminded him of Master Dark at all.

It was that weariness that tugged unexpectedly at Stefen’s heartstrings. A hero was supposed to be brash and loud and full of life and energy, not quiet and alone and reed-thin and heavy-eyed.

He tried to put a little cheer into his song, a little extra lift to the words and the tempo.

He kept his eyes moving, his banter and his attention inclusive, and the soldiers gathered around him basked in the warmth with which he infused his music, but from Herald Vanyel there was no visible reaction.

He switched gears: a man in pain couldn’t be so easily cheered just by a happy song, pain stood between him and any comforts the world might offer, so Stefen put a bit of his pain-blocking into the next song instead, the skill he’d trained at old Berte’s knee so long ago, curse her hide and rest her soul.

There were surprised sighs from several in his audience, a sudden relief of aches that never fully eased in a land where the cold cut so sharp, but still Herald Vanyel didn’t look over from his food and his ale.

Fine. Perhaps the Herald had the worst tin ear that Stefen had ever come across, and was half-deaf from too many blows taken to the head in his many skirmishes at the Karsite border.

But there were tunes that bypassed the ears and aimed directly at…regions south, he thought with a sudden, wicked grin. He’d been told the Herald was shaych, and Master Dark’s envoy had been very clear that Stefen was to act on that knowledge.

 A love song then, for a certain definition of love. He let his hands caress his gittern in ways that were positively indecent, while he drew resonant, plaintive notes from the tired old second-hand instrument, and put the full force of longing into his words: desire, hunger, raw, inelegant lust, until the soldiers were shifting around in discomfort for any number of reasons—most of the men were not shaych and that poor, confused woman over there _was_ —even as he held them with his song.

And Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron yawned.

He caught the Herald’s gaze as the man’s mouth snapped shut and for one moment the Herald’s eyes seemed to widen with recognition of something—that utterly failed to hold his attention as he tucked his head back down to his bowl with all the wit and interest of a cow at pasture.

_Godsbedamned._

* * *

He managed to keep his sulking in hand for two more songs, milder, simpler fare than the last, no need to leave his audience in that state, especially when the focus of his efforts remained oblivious.

He gave them one encore, a rousing if tongue-in-cheek call to battle that had preceded many a bloody day, Stefen would be willing to bet, but it had them clapping and stomping and left them grinning nonetheless.

He was tempted to keep playing, but Master Dark wasn’t a patient man and the sooner Stefen began, the sooner he’d be done.

A stop off at the fire for bread and a bowl for him, another at the tap for two ales, a moment away from watching eyes to dump in one of the packets of powder he’d been given, and he was ready to face this Herald Vanyel—his name confirmed in an awed whisper by the female soldier keeping an eye on the ale—who turned his nose up at the best of Stefen’s skills.

He longed to doctor up his own ale with a little of the flask tucked tight in a hidden breast pocket but he needed a clear head for this.

* * *

He examined him as he approached, the face so like Master Dark, but different. Older and younger at once, and altogether more real. Stefen had long suspected the Master did something to shape his appearance as it was; he’d seen him do it to others that fell under his hand, youth and beauty traded for loyalty, less

‘pleasant’ things for those who stood against him. But even the faces he’d changed to be beautiful never looked entirely right to Stefen, any more than Master Dark’s own face did. That human quality the Herald had that Master Dark didn’t share seemed to make all the difference.

“You look like a man who could use another,” Stefen said, artfully droll, a deliberate sparkle in his eye, a teasing grin at his lips. He set the drink down in front of the other man and sat across from him at a table hardly big enough for two, though the body of the barrel that made up the base of the table kept them well apart.

Even his flirting seemed wasted: the Herald looked up at him, then cast a vaguely curious glance at the stool across the room where he’d been sitting all night, as though he hadn’t noticed the music had stopped and expected to see Stefen’s twin still sitting there and playing.

Stefen wasn’t a vain man—or, all right, maybe he was—but he was a damned good musician. His talent was the only mercy the gods had ever granted him and he traded on it shamelessly to keep himself alive and out of trouble when he could.

“You weren’t paying attention to my music _at all_. Was my playing so off tonight?” he asked, leaning a bit closer, conspiratorial, putting a hint of playful pouting into his voice but giving the Herald an out, a chance to flatter, a chance to play the game.

“I’m not a fan,” the Herald answered, his words too deadpan to be teasing and Stefan stilled for a moment, feeling as though the Herald had just pulled the fancy knife from its sheath at his trim-to-the-point-of-being-skinny waist and shoved it into Stefen’s gut. He didn’t think he breathed, and a silence stretched painfully between them.

He saw it the instant the weary Herald realized what he’d said, and something like panic or like shame flashed across that unfairly handsome face, raising a slight flush to his cheeks.

This cruel, awkward man, was the Vanyel of legend?

“—of music,” the man added stupidly. But then his whole demeanor softened and perhaps Stefen could see a little of it. “I don’t care for music,” he clarified, and the embarrassment he showed could have been at his words, or his strange aversion, or pure artifice, Stefen had no idea. “I had dreams of being a Bard myself once. Some dreams die hard and leave a…bitter taste.”

He seemed sincerely downcast, his voice heavy with old regrets.

Stefen wasn’t entirely mollified but his end goal wasn’t to get in the man’s breeches so what did it matter if he had nothing of interest to offer the Herald at all, not even his music, the heart and soul of everything he was, the only part of his misbegotten life that had any objective value. He shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth before he could say something stupid. Then another.

“Looks like you did all right. Most’d think those Whites of yours are worth more than a pretty song, Herald,” he said, after he’d sufficiently shoved down the lump in his throat with soup.

He had no illusions. It wasn’t worth much, his singing, especially not when compared to a man who could call lightning and flame from the empty air or stand against the literal demons of hell and send them fleeing back to their master with little more than an upraised hand. But no one would ever notice a nobleman in his peacock finery if there weren’t beggar-boys like Stefen to compare him to, so that was fine, he knew his place.

The Herald had been drinking the drugged ale since not long after Stefen had sat, that was all that mattered.

As though catching Stefen’s thought though, the Herald suddenly put his mug down decisively and pushed himself away from the table, making Stefen look up in sudden alarm. He wasn’t sure if the Herald had drunk enough of it for the powder to do what it was supposed to. If it didn’t take him out as Master Dark’s envoy had promised, but the Herald caught on to what he’d been attempting—

But the man didn’t make it all the way to his feet before he was weaving as though he stood on the deck of a pitching ship, and grabbed for the table to steady himself.

“Whoa—” Stefen exhaled deeply and reached for him, helping him back down to his chair. “You look worn out. Don’t be so quick to move around, yeah? Another drink to steady your head?”

 But the Herald closed his eyes with the deep concentration of a drunk fighting back nausea and Stefen struggled against another wave of panic at the thought of the Herald vomiting up the powder and coming back to himself and denouncing him.

It was bound to be worth his head to be caught trying to drug a Herald. Master Dark would surely see him dead if he fell into Valdemar’s hands, even if the Heralds themselves were inclined to mercy, which he doubted.

Fuck them both, this had to work.

The Herald’s eyes were foggy and unfocused when he opened them, but he smiled weakly and Stefen had to shrug away the image of this Herald-hero of Valdemar as a lamb, toddling up to the butcher with a welcoming bleat, too innocent to know its killer could greet it with a smile. 

“I’m fine. I’ve just been on the road too long. I just need a good bed to fall into.”

Guilt and fear leaving Stefen himself near sick, he leaned around his side of the table to rest his hand on the other man’s thigh. Had to make it look good for anyone watching, even if he was nothing to the Herald himself.

“Now that’s a smart idea. But the beds up here are so cold…when you’re alone,” he murmured, his touch and his words completely indelicate, but his expression as coy as he could manage. The Herald jumped and tried to hide the way he suddenly jerked away by grasping for the mug and downing the rest of his ale.

Stefen tried not to wince.

The little lamb hadn’t caught sight of the butcher’s knife yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

He pulled back to his own side of the table to watch—and to wait.

The Herald shuddered once, subtly, and grabbed at the table with visibly feeble fingers, and then something about him changed, a sudden slackness, in spite of the tension in him.

Stefen pressed a hand over one of the Herald’s and leaned back into him, nuzzling his ear like a teasing lover, trying to be cold, trying to be practical. “Too good for the likes of me, hmm? That’s fine, fancier men than you have said the same, but fancier men than you have said otherwise, too. A man can’t win ‘em all, can he?” he said, not sure if the Herald could even still hear his rationalizing.

He chuckled heartily, just in case someone came close enough to investigate, as though in response to something the Herald could no longer say, and wrapped his arms around him, pulling one of the Herald’s arms across his shoulder and wrapping one of his own arms around the Herald’s waist, the better to subtly heave him to his feet.

He wanted to hurry away, not just because the other man was surprisingly heavy for his slim and wiry build and his near to dead weight was no easy burden on Stefen’s hardly impressive strength, but because this was the most dangerous part of the plan.

He was a dashing young blade in the arms of an intriguing older lover, a lover too far in his cups, perhaps, but no less interested for it and he aped laughter at flirty words whispered in his ear from where the Herald’s heavy head was resting against his neck, hidden behind the veil of that too-long silver and black hair, grinning and murmuring pointless little things “back.”

Across the way he saw a few soldiers look up from their card game and take him in with a surprised lift of their brows. One smiled indulgently and another looked away in embarrassment and Stefen just kept walking the limp Herald towards the back hallway.

* * *

He reached the hallway and reeled in relief at his near success. To his right was the hall to the sleeping rooms, to his left the hall to a small storage room and door to the outside. He only had to slip the Herald out unnoticed, hand him off to Rendan’s man, who’d been lurking in the forest for the last week waiting for a sign from Stefen, then take care of the Companion, and he’d be home free. The Herald’s fate past that was no concern of his.

Of course it could never be that easy, not in Stefen’s god-cursed life.

A trio of soldiers came out of the sleeping rooms just then, and thinking quickly Stefen swung the Herald up against the wall. He caught the Herald’s hands and lifted them above his head, twining their fingers and pressed himself, full body against the other man, leaning up to cover his mouth in a kiss, hoping the slackness of his partner’s expression would be taken for bliss as that silken hair fell back around his face.

The soldiers fell into an embarrassed silence, because it was two men kissing or because it was anyone at all, out in the open, when such things were probably frowned on in their ranks, Stefen didn’t know or care.

He made a good show of it, trying to tamp down the certainty that what he did was tantamount to rape, with the Herald in the state he was in. He’d never even know—Stefen hoped—and it literally made the difference of life or death for Stefen himself.

He heard them murmuring to each other as they passed, even over his pounding heart.

_Did you know the minstrel was shaych?_

_Gods, and the Herald?_

_What, you two couldn’t tell?_

_Well, I mean the minstrel, sure, but the_ Herald?

Their voices faded and Stefen pulled his lips from the unresponsive mouth, pressing his head instead for one moment against the other man’s shoulder. He inhaled deeply and shuddered. For all the things he’d done in his life, this was definitely in the running for the worst. Shite.

* * *

Practically a wreck of nerves, Stefen leaned the man gently into the roots of a tree on the edge of the forest. Another of Master Dark’s storms was raging and as long as he moved quickly his tracks would be covered by fresh snow long before anyone noticed that he and the Herald were missing.

He let out the trilling whistle that was to signal whoever Renden had left on watch, and tucked his bare hands against his sides, wishing he’d dared to stop for his cloak.

Otherwise alone, in the echoing silence of the dark, cold night, Stefen looked down at the Herald. Even in the shadows he was pale. Too pale? He’d worried that he might not have given the Herald enough and that the man would catch on to the trap; now he found himself worrying that he’d given the Herald too much and that he’d never wake again.

His spiraling fears were soon interrupted.

“Well, fancy that,” Rendan’s right hand, Tan, sneered, creeping from the shadows at the edge of the forest. “Against all odds, M’lord Guttersnipe caught him a Herald.”

“Just take him,” Stefen snapped. “And give him your cloak, I didn’t have a chance to grab his. Master Dark won’t like it if he freezes to death on the way back to Rendan’s.”

“That’s _Lord_ Rendan to you, boyo, and you’ll watch your tongue with me or I’ll cut it out for you.”

 “Lord” Rendan was no more than a robber baron who’d carved out a kingdom of cutthroats in a land no one else would have wanted. No one else until Master Dark had come anyway, and like all the other thieving rats of the northern forests, he was the Master’s man now.

“Just take him and keep him warm until I get back,” Stefen said again. “I still need to take care of the Companion.”

For a moment the brute’s eyes kindled. “One of those plush, white horses these gits lord about on? Why don’t you let me take care of that?” He smiled, a grotesque baring of dirty, yellow teeth.

“Because we need to be quick and quiet.” Otherwise it would be a blessing to be able to wash his hands of the mare’s blood. “I’ll be right back, just take care of the Herald.”

Tan snorted, but he reached down and hauled the fallen Herald up and over his broad, bullish shoulder like a sack of grain. “Best be as quick as you say, then. Don’t think I’ll not leave without you, you leave me waiting out in this weather,” he said sourly.

“Fine,” Stefen agreed and turned back to the guard post for the last time.

* * *

The stable lad was asleep, and the stable master had long fallen into his cups. In warmer weather there would have been guards stationed on the stable as well, but no sane person would have come trying to rustle horses in this storm, so the soldiers were taking advantage of the rest.

If he hadn’t left his things behind, Stefen would be carrying a pair of darts and hollow reed to shoot them and he’d be able to take out the Companion from across the stable.

No hope of that though, so instead he brought out another envelope of the powder he’d dropped in the Herald’s drink and readied it to use swiftly if she woke.

She was a beautiful thing, bigger than the ponies he was used to, but sleek and white as a fresh snow sparkling in sunlight, though she managed the feat, casting her gleaming rainbows of refracted light, while in shadow and the dim glow of a lantern.

In her sleep she sighed a little and shifted, and he cringed at the thought of what those silvery hooves could do to him if she started waving them around.

His hand shook as he stood at the unlatched gate to her stall and he raised the unfolded paper envelope and blew its contents towards her. Her nose twitched as the gray dust settled over her, seeming to dim the bright glow of her fur for a moment. It was probably just an illusion though, he quickly decided, since she glowed just as pure and bright as before as he eased the gate open and slipped into the large stall with her.

He took a deep breath and pulled the dagger from his boot, staring at her.

How much force would it take to cut a horse’s throat? Master Dark’s envoy had been very particular: capture the Herald, kill the Companion.

Stefen had killed men before, twice, but he’d never killed a horse. But if he’d killed the men to save his own life he could certainly kill a horse for the same reason.

He swallowed and braced his hand on the creature’s neck—gods, the hair of her mane was as soft as her Herald’s. He raised the dagger. She wouldn’t feel anything, he’d been promised that. The powder would steal the powers and senses of anything with magic, even one of the famous Companions of Valdemar.

But he put his dagger back without bloodying it.

Master Dark didn’t have to know Stefen had wasted his chance; when asked he could lie and say he hadn’t been able to get to the beast alone and hadn’t wanted to tip off the soldiers of the guard post. Bad enough what he was doing to the Herald, he didn’t have to kill the Companion as well. He wouldn’t, he thought defiantly. Let Master Dark take her himself if he wanted her.

* * *

This time his whistle was answered by the crunch of horse hooves in the snow.

Tan had already mounted and slung the Herald across the horse in front of him. Stefen winced at the thought of the pommel digging into the poor man’s belly, but at least Tan had taken his words to heart and covered the Herald with his own cloak.

“Got the beast?” he demanded, tossing Stefen the lead to the shaggy black pony that had brought him to the guard post, mere days before.

Stefen clambered up onto the unruly little horse, fighting the stubborn creature for control of the reins. At least it was warm, shaggy-furred as it was, though Stefen couldn’t help but think the unfriendly thing would make a better blanket than mount, glaring the thought towards the animal’s tiny mind. “Couldn’t,” he answered shortly. “Someone nearly caught me. I dosed her with the powder but I had to run before I could finish. It won’t matter; by the time she shakes it off we’ll be past where she can find us, especially with the Herald himself still mind-blocked.”

Tan frowned. “The Master won’t like that, I heard what his man told you. And Lord Rendan won’t like it neither.”

Stefen felt a distinct chill. He didn’t actually think he could lie to Master Dark, but he’d deal with that later. “It’s on my head, not yours, so don’t worry about it. Let’s go.”


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We see a bit of how Stefen has been living. 
> 
> (And yeah, this part plays close on how canon went when the bandits/raiders/Very Bad Men had Van, so here's where the archive warnings really start to come in.)

They rode through the night and much of the morning, Stefen only kept awake by the rough, punchy gate of his little mount. There were mountain passes only the bandits who claimed these woods knew, where only their stocky, sure-footed ponies could climb; once they’d reached them they had little fear of the guards catching up to them even if any of them noticed in time that the Herald and minstrel were gone. Stefen was in no hurry to reach ‘home’ but he couldn’t put it off either.

Rendan’s hall was hardly worthy of the name, but it suited the bastard who’d claimed it. Largely lacking in amenities, and barely more than a tumble-down hovel for all its size, Rendan wasn’t the sort to waste time and men on repairs.

In the winter—so most of the damned year—just like the guard post, they didn’t bother with the kitchen, just roasted meat and stewed up boiled whatever over the fire in the great hall. The boy, Damen, took care of that, though he got little thanks for it. Rendan had tricked the poor thing into coming to live with them while Stefen had been with Master Dark and the kid counted himself lucky if cooking was all that was asked of him when Stefen wasn’t there to keep Rendan and his men off.

“Oi, and what pretty little snow hare did you bring us back for dinner, eh?”

Stefen’s mouth twisted in disgust but he knew Gerth wasn’t talking to him. He slid off the unpleasant pony, dodging both its snapping teeth and its side-stepping attempt to trample his feet. “Back off, you, or I’ll make a blanket of you yet,” he hissed at it.

“Got the Master’s boy, sure enough,” Tan answered, dismounting and hurling the Herald back over his shoulder again with a hollow, meaty thud, letting Gerth take the horse. “Was our sweet Stefen ran him to ground though. He did alright. Might be time we stop leaving the little bugger behind when we go hunting. Good as bait even without Master Dark’s tricks, I reckon.”

Stefen’s hands fumbled at the pony’s reins so badly the ill-tempered beast managed another snap at him. He wanted no credit for bringing the Herald to them and he certainly didn’t want to give them ideas of dragging him along on their raids.

He knew better than to respond though. Instead he wrestled the pony back under control and silently took the reins of Tan’s mount from Gerth and led both animals away.

* * *

Stefen let himself into the hall as quietly as he could.

He needn’t have bothered though, Rendan and his men were entirely preoccupied with their guest. Many of Rendan’s boys originally hailed from further south, but had been driven hard into the far northern wilderness beyond the border, Heralds ever on their tails. There wasn’t a one in the lot who didn’t fully deserve to dance a hangman’s jig, but that didn’t stop them from blaming the king’s men, and especially the Heralds, for their sorry lots now.

Stefen winced and broke through the circle gathered around the Herald. They were holding him up like a rag doll, and Heverd was driving his fists hard into the man’s torso like he was just a training dummy. Gods.

He headed for the fire where Damen was turning the remains of a deer on the spit in a slow, mechanical measure, though he stopped first to fill a dirty bowl from the barrel of beer always given the place of honor on the table in the center of the room. Damen side-eyed him as he took a seat beside the fire and tucked his gittern against the wall.

“Want a bowl?” the boy asked, not to be caught shirking, though Stefen wouldn’t cuff him or rat him out to Rendan if he hadn’t.

He just shook his head and reached for the flask in his breast pocket. A small measure added to the beer would make things better. As better as they ever got for him.

Damen didn’t say anything else, not until Stefen had taken two long sips, with a weary, bow-headed pause between. Old Berte—he’d been so prickly towards her and her vices once, but he knew now what peace dreamerie could provide when nothing else did. It went down bitter but the clouded mind it left you with couldn’t mourn for choices made or choices never given. Gods forgive them both.

“They’re gonna kill that ‘un,” Damen said quietly and Stefen groaned a little, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. As a liquid instead of smoke the dreamerie was more potent, but he also seemed to be adjusting to it faster. He’d need a double dose to really push the world away and he was running low. The blood price on the Herald’s head should be worth a good size bottle, and spare him having to deal with Master Dark again for a bit, not that he wanted to think about that.

If the boy would just shut up—but no, even if Damen kept his tongue, Stefen would still hear the grunts and thuds and jeering of Rendan and his men as they played with the Herald.

Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, living legend, savior of the meek and the lost inside his borders and beyond, brought down from grace by a worthless street rat with a pretty voice and a quick hand at doctoring a drink.

“They won’t,” he promised the boy as he stood and moved to the corner and the threadbare pallet that he’d claimed as his bed long ago, before they’d had Damen to tend the fire. “They don’t dare. Master Dark would flay us all.”

He turned his back on the wide-eyed, shivering boy and pulled the piece of cloth that passed for a blanket up over his head.

* * *

For a while, between delayed sleep and the little bit of dreamerie he’d portioned for himself, Stefen was able to escape, but he woke to Damen, sniffling now, hunkering down beside him in the corner.

“Wha’s’a matter?” he slurred and yawned at once.

The boy’s expression was haunted but he just shook his head and hid his face against the wall, curled up and looking half his already meager years.

Thrice damn it, they hadn’t killed the Herald after all, had they? Stefen wondered in alarm, panic forcing him to his feet for a better view of what was going on on the other side of the room.

Rendan and his gang had been at the beer too long, the taste of it permeated the air. The Herald was laid out across the bench near the door, tied to it, belly down. _The_ bench. He’d have known what had spooked Damen then even if Rendan wasn’t in the process of undoing his trews and Tan wasn’t holding the man’s head up by a fistful of silver and black hair and crooning in that awful way he had.

_Shiteshiteshite_. Too far was too far, even for Stefen.

He crossed the room in a heartbeat, weaseling in between the eager observers who hadn’t already crashed into drunken stupor on whatever surface was convenient. He grabbed Rendan’s hand before he was done freeing himself.

“Wait now! No need to waste that ona fucking Southn’r like ‘im!” he tried to purr, but the dreamerie tangled his tongue and made his words come out slurred. It didn’t do enough to dull the pain when Rendan backhanded him hard enough to send him flying, skidding on his arse across the flagstones.

He’d expected it. He welcomed it. He was too old to be of much interest to them anymore, Tan in particular liked them much younger, and they were mostly bored even of knocking him around these days, but he was younger than the Herald and unlike the Herald he was conscious enough to cry out and cower, both definite attractions to this crew.

He crawled back to Rendan’s feet like he couldn’t keep himself away, feigning at being more drunk than he was.

He was also damned good with his mouth, if he did say so himself, and with more than music.

Rendan only shoved him away in disgust one more time— _perverted shaych fucker,_ he muttered, like Stefen was the disgusting one—before he gave in with a sneer and fisted Stefen’s hair to pull him closer.

* * *

When the last man wandered away, sated, Stefen collapsed against the bench where the Herald was still bound. He wiped at his mouth, not sure, with his bleary eyes and so far from the firelight, if the wetness he found there was his own blood or something worse. His head spun, he couldn’t catch his breath and he desperately wanted to vomit but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. His hands shook as he set his pants to right.

A darting glance showed him Damen had taken the bed in the corner, hidden under the blanket, facing the wall. He didn’t have the stomach for this life. He wasn’t as practical as Stefen had been, even at his age.

His stomach heaved and his head fell back and he cracked it on the bench, seeing stars for a moment. He licked his lips and the taste made him instantly regret it.

He didn’t know how long he’d sat there before Damen shook himself free of the blanket and his own memories and started scampering around the fire to gather a chipped bowl full of melted snow and a rag torn off a dead man’s shirt.

Stefen closed his eyes, hating the boy and the Herald both. _I’ve done this for_ you _more than once too, you damned little git_ , he thought. He didn’t remember anyone ever taking a punch for _him_ , let alone a cock up the ass. He turned his head and subtly tried to hide his tears against the Herald’s soft, quilted doublet.

He heard Damen’s sharp gasp when he was still a few feet away and opened his eyes to find the boy stopped, chewing at his lip, worry carving lines too deeply in his young face.

“He don’t look good,” he said, eyes past Stefen, on the Herald.

_He_ didn’t look good? Stefen was the one who’d—

But he craned himself around to check the Herald and his breath caught just as Damen’s had. The Herald looked more than half dead. His face, turned to one side against the rough-hewn bench was a mess of bruises and swelling, probably a broken nose, definitely a split lip, but worse, under the rising black and purple he was frighteningly pale, utterly bloodless, and his lips had a blue tinge.

Not daring to breathe at all Stefen reached for the high collar of his shirt, fumbling it aside to feel for the pulse in his neck.

His breath was a shuddering sob when he managed one and then, _“Rendan!”_ he screamed.

* * *

Even Rendan had the wit to look a little worried when he felt the Herald’s weak, thready pulse for himself.

“He’ll probably be fine—” he started to say, no conviction in his voice.

“He’s on death’s door, you idiot! What the fuck were you thinking?” Stefen’s words were cut off in a gasp when Rendan grabbed his throat and used that grip to pin him to the wall, lifting him so the toes of his boots strained to find enough purchase on the smooth stone to keep him from choking.

“You’ll mind that sharp tongue, boy. I can do worse to you, right enough,” Rendan growled through gritted teeth, his foul breath washing over Stefen and doing as much as the grip around his throat to make the world spin and darken.

But he’d left him enough leeway to shake his head, a little. “Good! Because what Master Dark’ll do’ll be worse than anything you can come up with. Kill me now and face him yourself!”

Rendan’s own younger brother was a good enough example of that: when the nights were calm enough you could still hear him screaming, and it had been years. Even a painful death was better than one that just _wouldn’t come_.

He frowned and let Stefen down, but didn’t take his hand away.

“The damned pretty boy needs help,” he mused, looking over at the Herald.

“He needs a goddamned miracle!” Stefen squawked. “He needs—”

“A Healer,” Rendan announced slowly, a smile stretching his lips.

“A miracle’d be more likely. There’re no Healers within leagues of here and with the storms—”

“I have a Healer,” Rendan said.

“You have a…”

Rendan nodded and grabbed his cloak where it’d been flung over a pile of still unsorted plunder. He stopped in the doorway to look back at the frightened circle of his men—and Stefen.

“You!” he barked at Stefen. “Take care of him. If he’s not still breathing when I get back I’ll just see if I can’t come up with something to rival the Master’s tricks— _before_ I hand you over to him. And the rest of you lot, keep your hands off of both of them or I’ll cut them all the fuck off when I get back.”

Every man there turned away as soon as the door closed, not willing to even breath too hard in the Herald’s direction and risk being blamed for worsening his condition.

Not that Stefen could imagine how his condition could be any worse, short of death itself, which would probably be a mercy at this point. He should’ve just let them bugger him to death, saved himself the pain and the Herald the lingering, he thought, using the knife from his boot to carefully cut the Herald loose.

He stared at him hopelessly. He didn’t stir, not in pain or complaint or even just restless dream. But he was still breathing.

“Damen,” he called over his shoulder. “Go grab me some blankets from Rendan’s bed.”

* * *

When Damen returned they made a nest of the blankets and a few musty pillows and Damen helped him lower the man onto his back in this softer new refuge.

They stripped him and Stefen was aware of the irony, considering how hard he’d been trying to keep the man in his clothes only a short time ago. The rest of him looked as bad as his face: broad, darkening bruises and a maze of cuts all laid over a whipcord lean body that didn’t look like it had any reserves to spare for surviving such a brutal assault. His hands and feet and head were like ice, but his chest was so hot it seemed to scald Stefen’s hand as he used the rag and the melted snow to try to wipe away the crusting and oozing blood.

Between his pallor and his fever, Stefen would’ve laid odds that he was bleeding internally. He wouldn’t survive the night, let alone being transported to Master Dark, unless Rendan came through with his Healer quickly. Stefen wasn’t certain it still wouldn’t take a miracle, Healer or no, to fix what Rendan and his men had done.

He finished cleaning him up as much as he could do with a rag and water and pulled the rest of the blankets up around him, leaving only his head uncovered so he could breathe.

With his back to the room, Stefen touched the ruined face, under the guise of turning it as gently as he could towards the light for a better look. It would be best if he never woke at all. Stefen could smother him with a pillow before Rendan returned—even if the Healer was good enough to put the broken man back together, Master Dark would surely just rip him apart again.

And it was Stefen’s fault for bringing him here. For giving him to Rendan and his jackels. It didn’t matter that he’d had no choice, that a command from Master Dark was a death sentence to those whose efforts failed, or that he was Rendan’s cur, dependent on him for everything and due for worse than just a beating if he tried to run off again.

He ran his thumb through the air above the swollen, cracked lips, and felt the soft puff of the Herald’s feeble breathing and knew he couldn’t do it.

With a sigh of frustration he sat back on his heels. “Get my gittern,” he snapped at Damen, who hadn’t gone far from his side since he’d returned with the blankets.

If he couldn’t help him and he couldn’t free him, at least he could make sure that if the Herald still felt _anything_ , it wasn’t pain.

* * *

“Outta the way, half-wit,” Rendan growled, toeing Stefen away from the Herald with unusual gentleness.

He blinked, scrambling to his feet to allow the stranger Rendan had brought to take his place at the Herald’s side.

“What in the hells did you do to him?” the older man demanded, going to his knees and rolling the blankets partway down the Herald’s chest before stopping to split a glare between Rendan and Stefan.

Stefen didn’t care whether the Healer blamed him or not, he was dizzy from playing so long and his throat was parched.

Gods, and how long _had_ it been? he wondered. His fingers burned and cramped when he flexed them, and he stared down at them as though he didn’t recognize them. They didn’t even feel like they were still fully a part of him.

“Don’t worry none about that,” Rendan said gruffly, but Stefen could still hear the worry behind his words. “Just fix him up neat. Master Dark wants him alive and you’re the one he’ll want to talk to if you botch it.”

It was an empty threat, but the Healer couldn’t know that, and he paled. Or maybe it wasn’t completely; Stefen wouldn’t put it past Master Dark to level the forest and everyone in it for the loss of the Herald, as bad as he’d apparently wanted him.

“Then take yourself off and let me work,” the Healer snapped pointedly and after a short stare-down Rendan snorted and withdrew, filling an old mug with beer and taking it to nurse across the hall, literally kicking one of his lackeys from the seat he wanted.

As soon as Rendan was gone Stefen felt something bump him in the back of the arm and he turned to find Damen standing behind him with a clay goblet full of beer.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t even meet his eyes but Stefen took it gladly and folded his legs beneath him to sit again and watch the Healer at his work. He could mix in another precious dose of his dreamerie, even just a few drops, to take the edge off. But he couldn’t help feeling he’d need to be sharper than it would leave him for whatever was coming.

_Because something was definitely coming,_ he thought, as the Healer put one hand on the Herald’s forehead and one on the center of his chest, and closed his eyes.

* * *

The beer did soothe his throat at least, though his fingers continued to ride an uncomfortable edge between numb and burning and he rubbed them absently. Near as he could tell he’d been singing a good _six_ _hours_ ; it was a wonder he’d hadn’t played his fingers down to nothing and sung his voice away entirely.

“What’s he doing?” Damen asked.

“Healing magic,” Stefen said, wincing at the way his words came in a croak.

“Will he really save him?”

Stefen shrugged. “Who knows?”

“What happens to us if he don’t?”

“Just don’t think about it—”

The Healer’s head shot up and he pulled his hands back to grab his knees so tightly his knuckles showed white. His eyes blazed and his face was drawn in tense, hard lines. “He’s as near to death as anyone I’ve ever seen. I don’t even understand how he’s still alive. But he won’t be much longer if I—” He stopped, inhaled deeply, and shot a quick look over at Rendan before turning back to Stefen. “I can’t get in to heal him, there’s some sort of barrier.”

Stefen’s eyes widened. The damned powder that was keeping the Herald quiet was keeping the Healer from his work?

“I can take it down—” His thin smile said he had some idea what that would mean, but not enough, if it didn’t frighten him. “—if that’s all right?” he finished. “I can’t do anything for him with it up.”

Stefan looked at the Herald, still and quiet as he’d been since he’d drugged him. Even if he hadn’t been aware of everything that happened since— _good_ , if it meant he wouldn’t remember the beating at the hands of Rendan and his men, or what Stefen had been up to afterwards—when he regained consciousness he would probably remember the last face he’d seen before he’d gone under, which would mean it was Stefen he’d be after.

Demonslayer. Shadowstalker. Valdemar’s Vengeance.

_Shite._

Stefen licked his lips and nodded.

The Healer returned his hands to their places at the Herald’s head and chest and closed his eyes again. If he could actually do this…

Stefen snaked around and grabbed Damen’s wrist.

The boy jerked and then froze at the unexpected touch, his expression one of terror and betrayal.

“Go to the storeroom and lock yourself in and don’t come out no matter what you hear,” he told him.

For a moment the boy just looked at him, paralyzed by fear.

Stefen shook him, harder than he’d have meant to. “Go!”

As soon as he released him the boy took off running. Stefen watched him shoving the heavy door of the storeroom closed behind him—the door was still cracked when there was the first sign of movement from the Herald.

A gasping breath, deep, ugly, shuddering.

Rendan and his men took no notice.

The Herald opened his eyes, bloodshot, the silver of his irises standing out even more.

Half the roof exploded, like a giant had reached down from above, torn it off and crumpled it in an enormous fist, allowing the debris to rain down over the hall, dust and snow and sharp bits of wood and stone and mortar. Stefen dove to the side, close to the wall, hiding from the worst of the falling rubble, which was so far mostly concentrated over Rendan and his crew.

They’d been completely engaged in their beer and dice games until then, but after picking themselves up and shaking away the strange, _wooshing_ sound that had accompanied the violence, they’d grabbed their weapons and were squaring up to face their attacker.

The Herald was clambering to his feet as well and his eyes weren’t just bloodshot, they were glowing an infernal red. The Healer had been knocked aside at the same time the roof had exploded and lay crumpled against the wall, unmoving, and Stefen didn’t know whether the brave fool lived or not. Either way the Herald paid him no attention, and neither did he look at Stefen, who kept himself very, very still while the Herald stalked across the remains of the hall to Rendan.

He spoke, but his voice was low and deadly quiet and Stefen couldn’t hear what he said over the wind that moaned across the open roof of the building like breath at the mouth of an open bottle.

Three of the men, Resley, Gerth, and another Stefen couldn’t see, suddenly fell to their knees, screaming so loudly he could hear them even over the wind. Some of the others panicked, scrambling away from their fallen companions, others, hardier or more foolish, stood their ground, but none dared advance.

Then out of the sky above them, still swirling with falling snow and bits of the roof, a finger of lightning reached down like an arrow and struck Gerth, lighting the hall with a terrible glow, leaving a smell of ozone and burnt meat and a smoldering, black pile of refuse. One after another the lightning took out all the kneeling men, as though they were no more than ants being crushed by a capricious child.

_Who’s next?_ Stefen thought he heard the Herald say, but he couldn’t be sure.

Two men, Kef and Jess, tried to make a run for it, stumbling through burning wreckage for the door, but the Herald waved one hand and both of them flew at the wall as though they’d been struck by cannonballs, and they hit the stone and timber with such sickening crunches that Stefen wasn’t surprised that they didn’t rise again from where their bodies fell.

Five more went to their knees, screaming like Resley and Gerth before them, unholy screams, like something was tearing them up from the inside, until the lightning silenced them each again.

Stefen couldn’t find pity for them. Rendan’s men were black-hearted brutes without exception, but he couldn’t stand to keep watching as the Herald picked them off.

Hoping the Herald remained distracted, though he fully expected to face him soon, he shuffled forward along the wall to the slumped Healer. The man was not only still breathing, but he was already stirring, twitching at Stefen’s cautious touch and stretching from his crumpled position with a pained expression.

“God’s, what’s going on?” he asked weakly, blinking and clearly unable to focus on the massacre happening before them.

“Shhh!” Stefen hissed. He’d had some vague thought of shooing the man through the door that was only a few short feet away, but the old Healer was so woozy he doubted he’d make it without help and he didn’t trust that the two of them moving together wouldn’t attract the Herald’s fury.

He couldn’t stop thinking now that the Herald-Mage was accounted a hero in all the songs out of Valdemar—but the songs that came from Karse called _him_ the demon. How could this much power, even if used against evil men, be anything but evil in itself?

Surely the magic wasn’t endless? Surely he would tire soon?

Stefen let himself collapse against the wall. His hands hurt when he used them to brace himself and adjust his position and it took him a moment to remember why that was. Could it have been such a short while ago that Rendan had stopped him playing?

Across the hall there were only three left standing: the Herald, Rendan, and Tan. The Herald could have been the stone effigy of some ancient god, naked and beautiful in it, even with the bruises like blooms of darker stone in white matrix.

It was quiet. Even the wind had calmed. Had that all been the Herald?

Tan moved stiffly away from the two other men and picked up the shaft of a spear, broken at each end by the carnage that had gone on around it. The Herald made no move to take the weapon as Tan brought it back, and held it out between himself and Rendan.

They each took a stiff, unwilling step towards the sharp points of broken wood nearer to them.

_He’s going to make them impale themselves,_ Stefen realized, and turned his head so he didn’t have to watch.

The door of the storeroom caught his eyes—because it was creeping open. He tried to shake his head in warning, but Damen wasn’t looking at _him_ , hidden in the shadows of the wall by the bench, a direction the boy had never liked to look too often anyway. The boy’s eyes were wide on the wreck that had been made of the great hall: the bodies, the fallen ceiling, the scattered fires, the little whirlwinds of snow.

He took a faltering step out into the room, not seeing anything but the chaos the Herald had left, not noticing the danger he was stepping blindly into.

He was closer to the Herald than he was to Stefen and the Healer.

Stefen held his breath, hoping the Herald would remain focused enough on Tan and Rendan that Damen would have the chance to run either back to the storeroom or to the door.

The gods protect fools and children, Stefen had been told, but he’d never found that to be true.

Damen’s shocked gaze finally fell on the strange tableau the Herald made with the robber lord and his man, and he gasped, a sound so loud in the silence that had fallen that Stefen could hear it clearly from his place by the bench.

The Herald whirled, hand outstretched to the boy, a white glow kindling in his empty palm. His face was already looking more like it had when they’d first met, the bruises fading, the swelling diminished. A terrifyingly beautiful face with no mercy in it.

Stefen flung himself to his feet. “Damen!” he shouted, distracting the boy and the Herald both.

Though that glowing, outstretched hand turned menacingly towards Stefen, the Herald’s eyes clearly tracked the boy, who’d immediately started running, even when Stefen himself ran a few paces to meet him and shove the child behind his back.

Stefen was panting with fear, not exertion, so lightheaded he had good reason to hope he’d pass out before the Herald turned his powers on him. Damen was clutching his hands, burying his head in the small of his back. It only struck him then that Damen would probably have been safer if he hadn’t let him come hide behind him. If the Herald called his lightning on him now, Damen would be caught by it.

He forced his breath to steady; forced away the black edges of terror closing around his vision; forced his spine to straighten and his chin up, and stared square into those disturbing silver eyes.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Van's awake!

Vanyel felt like a madman.

He had no way of knowing how long he’d been trapped inside his own mind or what was going on outside of it.

Was ‘Fandes in danger? Was _he_ in danger? Someone could have a knife to his throat and he’d have no idea and no way to defend himself. There was nothing in this featureless darkness, nothing in this unbroken quiet, nothing but him and his fear and his raging.

Even before his powers had been woken he’d had his eyes and his ears, his sense of smell, his sense of taste, his skin, a sense of direction, a sense of time passing, he’d never realized how much he was aware of the world around him until now, with absolutely all of it stripped away.

The first thing to penetrate his empty prison had been the music.

_The Bard._

He’d thrown himself again at the walls of this strange cage, howling curses, screaming spells, but nothing changed. He was trapped, and the music came to him anyway.

He’d sunk down into sullen quiescence.

But he’d always loved music. He’d lived for it when he was younger; had once, in his melodramatic youth, thought his life was over just because he’d been told he’d never be a Bard—before he’d learned how much more there was to gain _and_ lose than that.

He couldn’t help but let the music sweep him up, curl around him, bring him peace, even if he didn’t want it. He didn’t recognize the songs, he wasn’t sure he was hearing them right, in this place, anyway. They gave him a sort of sense of time though. One song ended, another began. Again. Again. Again. After a while he lost track, but he could still keep up with every single song as it played at least. Every beginning and end was _something_ to hold onto.

The next thing to penetrate the barriers was the feeling of someone poking at them. First the music stopped and then distantly, invisibly even, he somehow knew something was touching the outside of the walls. A curious touch, he thought. Someone who wasn’t sure what they’d found or what was inside of it.

He perked up.

_Let me_ out! he thought at the other presence, even though he knew that as barricaded as his powers were there was no chance that he’d be heard.

But there was tension, something pulling at the barrier from the outside.

Yes!

A pause. Tension. A pause.

Then, in a crashing wave of agony, the world was back.

* * *

Everything pressed in on him at once. It was like he was communicating with a heartstone, filling his mind with a flood of memories that weren’t his—only they were, or they should be.

_The Bard_ , promising to ‘take care’ of his Companion, the ride through narrow mountain passes slung over a saddle, a beating that had gone on for hours, jeers, cheering, being spat upon, then—being flung face down across a bench, ropes, his trews undone… _the Bard_ —no, he’d wonder at that later—the singing, an eternity of singing, a Gift-backed serenade that stole away the pain and brought a relief he’d been too insensate to appreciate.

He could appreciate it now though, since he could still feel the echoes of those songs soothing the worst of his injuries. He hurt in ways he hadn’t known he could and he’d been sure by now he knew all the ways that he could hurt. He felt like he’d flung himself from a tower and been shattered on the earth.

The Healer—he was the one who’d freed him. Perhaps someday he’d feel bad about grabbing that mind-link the Healer still had established between them, feeling the man’s distracted astonishment at the sheer power that he’d found once the barrier had been brought down—and draining him to the dregs of his own simple healing energy. It had been instinct, the way a drowning man would drag another down with him in his efforts to stay above the current.

Having taken all he could use he flung the man away without a thought and turned, rising, finding the tormentors who’d made such awful sport of him. He smiled. His skin felt too tight, constricting over blade-edged bones. The roof exploded, showering down the destruction he was so eager to bring to them.

“So, who’s going to volunteer to fill me in on everything that’s been going on while I’ve been…indisposed, hmm?” he murmured, relishing the terror in faces that he could so clearly remember laughing as they tortured him.

He didn’t expect an answer, and he grabbed three of the bastards with his mind and started ransacking their memories, ignoring their agonized screams, the things he found there only driving him on. Murderers, rapists, men who wallowed in the suffering of others, _especially_ those weaker than themselves.

And they worked for—“Master Dark.” A powerful, secretive mage, cruel enough to make eager use of such base tools as these. Cruel enough to spend years, decades perhaps, killing the children of Valdemar who’d had the potential for the Mage-Gift, cunning enough to take out trained Herald-Mages from across the border before anyone took notice.

_Leareth_.

He dispatched his first victims with a trio of lightning bolts.

“Who’s next?” he demanded with sinister cheer.

Two men ran but he flattened them, smashing them into the wall like insects.

The rest he picked apart, one after another, peeling their minds open like flowers to get whatever information he could about their Master Dark, horrified by every memory he touched of their own crimes, so many innocents…

He saved the leader and his right-hand man for last, deliberately. He remembered Lord Rendan—his _hands_. And the other one, Tan, helping tie him down, his fist in Van’s hair, pulling his head back, the filthy things he’d said.

If it hadn’t been for the Bard—

He commanded Tan to fetch a broken shaft of wood, delighting in how the panicked mind squirmed in his thrall, helpless and uncertain of his fate. When he made them both brace the weapon between them and begin walking towards the broken, pointed ends he felt the frantic struggle in their thoughts, the terror, the despair, and something in him exulted.

For every life they’d ruined, for every life they’d taken, whether they’d ended it or not—

A gasp, one he’d heard before, just as close. Horror. Terror.

He spun, already calling lightning to him, ready for another attack, and found the boy. Damen, the brigands had named him in their thoughts. He’d been their victim often since he’d come to them, replacing the Bard; though as often as he could the Bard had stepped back into the part to spare him.

But why did the boy look so afraid? Couldn’t he see that Vanyel was avenging what had been done to him?

“Damen!” someone— _the Bard_ —screamed from across the hall.

It was his fault Vanyel was here. He was the one who’d given Vanyel to them. And what of Yfandes?

The flames of his fury raged higher, but he watched the boy run across the room…to the Bard’s arms, to be quickly shoved behind the slight, trembling form. He’d thought him pretty before, in the common room of the guard post. Now he was beautiful: a fallen prince facing down a dragon to defend his kingdom of one. Two, if Van was correctly reading the way he’d placed himself between Van and the Healer, who slumped against the far wall.

For a moment he didn’t know what to do. The young man looked terrified. Pale, trembling, but standing tall against all Vanyel’s power as though courage alone could save him. It couldn’t. Van had known many courageous men and women and seen them cut down as easily as any coward in his days at the Karsite border.

The lightning in his hand coalesced, flickering hungrily over his skin. 

_:Vanyel!:_ the familiar mind-voice trumpeted, faint and distant, full of worry, full of love.

For an instant he saw himself as she would: towering menacingly over a half-grown boy and a child, surrounded by dead men, men he’d killed…horribly. Whatever their crimes, it hadn’t been Vanyel’s place—

His knees gave out, and the lightning vanished as he threw his hands out to catch himself. There was a sharp, shooting pain as a splinter drove itself into his right knee, a twinge from his left ankle, and his left arm ached with the memory of a long ago break as both his arms shook with the effort of keeping him from collapsing entirely into the snowy rubble of the hall.

His stomach heaved; he sobbed; he let himself collapse.

* * *

As the madness left him it took his strength with it and he curled on his side, feeling crushed by the magnitude of what he’d done. Yfandes was alive and she was coming for him. But what would she find? He was empty, broken. Too easily broken by Leareth’s trick, he’d already been hopelessly flawed.

“Get out of here!” he heard the Bard snarl. And, “Go! D’you wanna be here when he gets his second wind?”

It was only when he heard the sudden heavy crunching of boots stomping a careful distance away from him that he realized he’d left Lord Rendan and Tan to their own devices.

He shuddered and it turned into shivering. He was lying naked in the snow, and a fresh fall was starting to drift down through the open roof.

_Showoff,_ he thought wearily, too tired to hold on to genuine anger now, even at himself. _A fine mess you made. It’d serve you right to freeze to death right where you lay._

He heard the Bard again, and other voices. Damen, the boy, and Brodie, the Healer.

He knew from his rifling through the bandits’ minds that Brodie had a little stead not far from here. A simple place, part of one of the small communities that Lord Rendan and his ilk had preyed on. He could take the Bard—Stefen, that was his name—and Damen with him. They’d all have a better life there than they would have here.

At least they would if someone managed to do something to stop Leareth, their Master Dark, from running roughshod from his seat of power north of the Ice Wall Mountains down into Valdemar, since that man would surely decimate everything that stood in his way.

_Could he really do much worse to them than you did, though?_ a small voice in the back of his mind wondered.

_I left them alive. I left them free._

_Only because of Yfandes’ timely mind-touch. How much would be left of any of them if she hadn’t reached you so soon?_

Things were darker for a moment, and then warmer. Someone had thrown a blanket over him.

That was more kindness than he deserved. He shut his eyes, wishing it had fallen a little higher to cover more of his neck, but lacking the energy or ambition to fix it for himself.

There was more crunching of boots in the snow and then blessed quiet.

* * *

He didn’t know if he slept, or just lay in a daze. Even the pain and cold were a welcome relief from the complete mental isolation he’d endured while caught in Leareth’s snare.

In either case he didn’t know someone had come back for him until he felt the hand on his shoulder. He started in alarm, afraid to strike out with his power and catch another innocent, but afraid not to, and suffer more himself.

_Selfish._

He somehow recognized the touch as the Bard’s before he managed to open his eyes and focus on him, as ridiculous as it seemed that he would have dared to come back.

But Leareth’s man had tasked him with delivering Vanyel to him and Van’s stolen memories of what Leareth did to those who failed him implied a strong motivation for the Bard’s return. Weak as a newborn, Vanyel wasn’t likely to put up much of a fight at the moment.

“Can’t just lie there,” the boy said gruffly. “C’mon, lemme help.” He seemed embarrassed, not meeting Van’s eyes as he pulled him up.

He tugged Van’s arm across his shoulder like a yoke and braced him with an arm around his waist.

“I feel…we’ve done this before,” Van couldn’t quite keep himself from quipping.

The Bard snorted. “And you haven’t lost nearly enough weight since the last time,” he said.

“Are you calling me _fat?_ ” It was not an accusation that had ever been thrown at him and it was hard to completely keep the affront from his voice, in spite of how his toes were going numb from the bare trek across the frozen ground.

“You _look_ like you’d blow away in a hard wind and _weigh_ more than Resley the Liar—and he was a full head taller than you,” Stefen said dryly, but then had to focus on helping him make the step up from what was left of the hall into a small storeroom.

It wasn’t noticeably warmer than it was in the hall, but he curled up again as soon as he was sitting. The Bard wouldn’t leave him alone at first, insisting on brushing away the debris that was clinging to him, not just his feet but the whole side that had been in the snow while he’d lain there. Only when Stefen deemed him sufficiently ‘clean’ did he help Van the last bit of the way to a familiar nest of blankets that had been moved from the great hall.

He fell into it with a grunt and pulled the blankets up around himself.

“You should eat something,” the Bard said, but Van was already drifting off.

* * *

He woke from a dream of dying alone in an endless field of ice to—almost warmth. In a twisted ball of blankets, his head resting on an uncomfortable pillow that he soon realized was the Bard’s knee, his gaze darted around his surroundings, confused.

The storeroom. It was dark, but there was a small, dimmed lantern with a glass cover, sitting on a barrel near the door. The Bard had draped a blanket around his own shoulders and fallen asleep, sitting up with his back in the corner of two tall shelves, Van’s head on his lap, one arm stretched protectively across Van’s torso.

He wondered if he’d already sent word, through Brodie and Damen perhaps, for Leareth to come pick him up. Maybe that was why the Bard was still there; still, apparently, making sure Vanyel didn’t freeze to death.

…he thought Lendel had been there at the end of his dream. He could remember the feeling of his arms around him, just before he’d woken. He’d missed that feeling, very much, he mused to himself, falling back asleep.

* * *

The next time he woke was even more disorienting—he knew he wasn’t just suffering the aftereffects of Leareth’s powder, this was burnout from the reckless use of magic he’d employed to destroy Rendan’s men so dramatically and thoroughly, as well as from the massive amount of healing energy his body had been expending just to keep itself alive while he was unconscious and to heal himself since.

He was alone when he woke up, or at least he was no longer sleeping on the Bard.

A cold wind cut through the ball of blankets, prompting him to turn his blurry stare towards the only door to the little room, where he saw Stefen standing, frozen still in shock, a snow drake poised to leap at him from the great hall.

He shook his head, shaking the sleep and dreams away. No, not a snow drake, the eyes were sapphire, not amethyst, and it was much too small, but the way she had her head lowered and her teeth bared, furiously reptilian—

“’Fandes!” he called and instantly her ears went forward and she rushed the door, shoving the Bard out of her way, making him yelp as he fell back against the hot glass of the lantern, and then moving in until she filled up the whole space, and went gracefully into a recumbent curl around her Chosen.

_:Van!:_ her mind-voice was full of such relief he tangled his hands in her mane and buried his sudden tears against her. Her big, warm body centered him, warmed him, and calmed his fractured thoughts. The grief that drove him, she shared. The pain that cut him now, she’d have borne for him, if she could.

She snuffled at his hair, smelling him or grooming him, her thoughts didn’t reveal, and he could already feel sleep pulling at him again so he couldn’t find it in him to care.

He turned to the Bard, perched on the edge of the barrel by the door. He’d shut it behind Yfandes, but now he sat there, arms around himself against the cold, even the one blanket he’d been using for himself earlier he’d left with Vanyel when he’d opened the door on Yfandes. He was a picture of stoic solitude.

Van held his hand out, wincing a little at the cold that immediately started gnawing at it. No wonder it felt like his nose was numb.

“Hey!” he said, waiting with sleepy patience for the Bard to look at him.

The boy visibly started when he saw Van’s extended hand. He blinked.

Vanyel beckoned. “You’ll freeze over there,” he said.

The Bard shot a look between Vanyel and Yfandes. “Good for you, right?”

Van tried to smile. He knew his face would be a mess—he’d been able to see what he’d looked like before, through the eyes of the bandits’ memories—but he still tried. “I have questions for you still. Can’t let you freeze to death before I can ask them.” He tried for levity too, but the boy’s frightened expression told him he’d missed the mark.

“Could make me tell you. I couldn’t stop you.” The boy’s words were hushed, haunted, only a little sulky. No wonder, from what Vanyel had seen of his past—and what _he’d_ seen of Vanyel’s present abilities.

His hand dropped. There was nothing he could say to that; he _could_ make the boy say anything he needed him to, he didn’t even need to make him say it, he could just pluck the thoughts from his mind as he’d done with the others of Lord Rendan’s men and Stefen had no reason to think he wouldn’t do just that.

His own gaze lowered with shame and ‘Fandes nuzzled his cheek.

_:That wasn’t you, beloved. You are not a man who strips the choices from people.:_

_:For Valdemar? For the safety of my friends and family?:_

_:Perhaps,:_ she answered calmly. _:But never for revenge._ _That’s_ not _you.:_

He sighed and absently stroked her cheek in return.

While they’d spoken the Bard had made his mind up. A stubborn tilt to his chin, he slid off the barrel and sidled up to the small space left between Van and the wall, opposite ‘Fandes. He eased himself down, but Van, not willing to stand on ceremony when frostbite and death were a very real possibility, started rearranging the blankets to cover both of them, careful only to keep one still wrapped around himself alone for modesty’s sake, whatever good modesty would still do him.

For a moment that left them both shivering with the cold Stefen brought with him, but with Yfandes on the other side and the blankets, it wasn’t long before they warmed.

* * *

‘Fandes didn’t trust Stefen.

Vanyel hid nothing from her at first, opening his memories completely as soon as he was well enough, to let her see all that had happened, all he’d done, and all he’d learned about their enemy.

Their mind-link pulsed with her anger when they spoke of Rendan and his men. She didn’t blame him for what he’d done to them, leaving him in the odd position of ruefully wishing she had, if only for the cleansing absolution to be found in facing someone else’ condemnation instead of just his own. She never had had time for his self-pity though.

Van’s stolen memories of the Bard revealed a brash young man who’d grown up hard, a beggar from the streets of some southern city who’d found himself sold to a merchant caravan that trafficked in the vilest sorts of contraband. He was from Valdemar, not a son of the north, though he’d been taken from his home country before he’d realized he’d ever been there and he seemed to hold no sentiment towards the land of his birth, not that Van could blame him, considering how utterly they’d failed to protect him. The Heraldic circle knew that slavers passed even across their own borders, and did their best to stomp it out where they could find it, but Valdemar’s land was vast, and such evil was secretive, cunning, and elusive.

The brigands had thought the boy was mouthy, willing to take a blow or two rather than pass on a cutting word. And he’d taken plenty, and more than just blows, though Lord Rendan had made them lay off a little when they’d realized he was good for more than just tending the fire and…gods, there were still some parts of those memories Van couldn’t help but shy from.

Their Stefen had a special talent, a Wild Gift perhaps, if what he was seeing in their thoughts had been true; not just the Bardic Gift but also an unusual ability to genuinely sing pain away. It was useful to men who’d lived by their swords, always at war and pillaging their neighbors.

But a handful of years before, their Master Dark had come visiting, seen the boy, and spirited him away. He’d eventually returned with an old gittern, a new addiction to dreamerie that he somehow procured from Master Dark himself, and, if anything, a cockier attitude than before.

He’d been touched by the Master, one way or another, and the brigands were afraid of him now. More than one had wished he’d never come back at all, but they were too frightened of what he might still mean to Master Dark to dare to try to drive him away.

And if he did mean anything at all to this Master Dark, if he’d seen him, if he’d been to his stronghold beyond the Ice Wall Mountains, and become so important that Master Dark would have sent an envoy to Lord Rendan with orders for Stefen to go personally to intercept Vanyel, then that made the young Bard very valuable indeed.

* * *

“You’re looking…well,” Stefen said.

Van looked up from the bowl of plain porridge he’d been devouring.

The boy had become a ghost. He hovered. He…lingered. He’d found clothes for Vanyel from the remains of the rest of the keep, and left them for him. He left him food and fuel for the lantern but after that first night he’d slept elsewhere. But every time he thought the youth might have left, and that he’d have to go hunt him down again, the boy would pop up, looking worried and guilty and watchful.

If it wasn’t the face he saw in the bandits’ memories he’d have wondered if he had the wrong Bard; he could see nothing of the sarcastic, arrogant young man Rendan’s men had come to secretly fear. Nothing even of the smiling flirt from the common room of the guard post.

Van was glad he’d approached him again though. It had been four days since Vanyel’s massacre of the brigands and between his own meager healing powers, the boost he’d taken from Rendan’s Healer, and Yfandes’ bolstering of his power, he was well enough that he couldn’t just allow himself to keep bumbling around. Savil was still dead, Valdemar was still mage-less, except for himself, and an enemy was still camped to their north, eyes obviously set on them.

He’d kept his evolving plan even from Yfandes, knowing how she’d react and wanting to put off the argument as long as possible, but the time was fast approaching—

“You should go!” the boy blurted out.

“Go?”

“You look strong enough to ride, you’re eating again, you should get on your Companion and ride off. Back where you came from.” He didn’t look at him while he said it, his fingers plucking listlessly at the strings of his gittern.

“And what will happen to you if I do?” he asked, genuinely curious about the boy’s answer. Did he think he had some special sway with Master Dark? Did he think he could escape as well?

_:It’s a trick,:_ ‘Fandes answered grimly.

Vanyel mentally sighed at her.

_:You watch, he’ll send us on our way—straight into the jaws of another trap. An ambush of more brigands. Or his Master Dark himself.:_

_:It is past time we met.:_

_:But not on_ their _terms.:_

In Fandes’ mind as in the bandits’ Stefen was entirely Master Dark’s man.

Vanyel couldn’t have said why, but he had his doubts.

She mentally sighed back at him and he fought a smile.

But the question got a little spirit out of the youth, who raised his head stiffly. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Because he didn’t think Master Dark would hurt him? Or because he felt so guilty he didn’t think he deserved the concern?

_:Because he doesn’t intend to let us get away.:_

That would be fine, too; Vanyel wasn’t going to turn tail and run now.

“What do you know about Master Dark?” he asked.

That got the boy to look at him, but his face fell and his eyes went blank. He wasn’t thinking pleasant things, Van could tell that much.

“What do _you_ know?” the boy shot back, after a moment, eyes narrowing.

“Before I killed Lord Rendan’s men, I went through their memories. I know they worked for him. I know you work for him,” he said gently. He wondered if he dared use a truth spell. Someone with a strong enough Bardic Gift might be able to sense it, even the lesser one that would only alert him if Stefen lied, rather than actually compelling the truth.

“He wants you alive, Herald Vanyel,” the Bard said haltingly. “There’s a bounty on your head all across these hills and woods, I wouldn’t even trust the holdings if I were you; I don’t think there’s anyone who wouldn’t rather be on his good side. He thought you’d be coming north along the main road from Valdemar. He sent word that you’d probably pass through that guard post where I found you, and since Rendan’s the closest one to there he said I should go and bring you back. He sent me the powder and some poisoned darts to make sure you couldn’t fight.”

“Why you?”

The Bard glared at him, looking insulted. “Why do you think?”

He shook his head, honestly not understanding.

_:Oh, Van,:_ Yfandes sounded despairing, but amused. She probably had any number of his memories that would’ve done but she picked the one from the guard post, when the Bard had shoved him against a wall and kissed him to keep a group of soldiers from realizing that Vanyel had been drugged. He hadn’t even been conscious at the time, but she still managed to drag up the feeling of the young man’s fingers laced with his above their heads, the lithe, young body pressing him against the wall, the soft lips—

_I get it!_

She snickered.

He blushed. “I don’t—I’m not attracted to children,” he stammered.

If anything the words only infuriated the Bard more. The redness staining his cheeks didn’t seem to be a flush of embarrassment. He looked away, his jaw set.

_I probably could have handled that better._

_:But then you wouldn’t be my own, dear, oblivious Chosen.:_

Now was not the time for distractions, hurt feelings, or embarrassment.

“I need you to take me to Master Dark,” he said.

_“What?”_

The Bard’s voice and the mind-voice echoed each other.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Van heads north. With Stefen.

In this only the Bard and the Companion were in complete agreement.

“It’s suicide!” Stefen insisted.

_:You may as well let him take you to Leareth in chains.:_

She wasn’t far off, but he remained implacable.

Yfandes could see how set his mind was on this course; the Bard fought him longer but eventually gave in as well.

At a guess, and at only a slight probing with his Empathy, Vanyel would say the boy felt guilty for what he’d brought Van into.

By now Vanyel himself was inclined to be more practical: the Bard could get him to Leareth, perhaps get him close enough to see what power the dark mage really had amassed and enable him to send Yfandes with specifics to get backup from the other Heralds—which should have been his plan all along if he hadn’t let his personal grief cloud his usually much more calculated thinking.

Arrogant fool.

“I will take however much you have left of that powder, though.” He told the Bard, not phrasing it as a request.

The boy nodded and reached into a hidden pocket in his shirt, a cutpurse’s trick for hiding what they’d stolen, pulling out a fistful of small, gray, waxed-paper packets.

Vanyel spread them out on his palm, counting, before he looked up again. “That’s all of them?”

Stefen nodded, eyes darting to meet Van’s and then away. “That and the two I used, one for you, one for her.”

“And the darts?”

He made a face. “Left with my gear at the guard post.”

His words matched Vanyel’s stolen memories from the bandits who’d seen Master Dark’s man charge Stefen with the capture. Ten small packets; eight now. And the pre-poisoned darts had been carefully wrapped in cloth and kept in a wooden box for safety; he couldn’t hide those in any pocket.

“Thank you.”

* * *

The only question as far as Van was concerned was whether to let Stefen ride one of the little mountain ponies the brigands had used or to ride double on Yfandes. She made her objections to carrying the Bard very clear—and the Bard made his objections to riding double clear as well, when Vanyel decided that it was the wiser course anyway. She could go much faster than any pony, and it would be easier for Vanyel to cast a seeming on them if they were all one ‘mass’ instead of two.

“She’ll bite me!” the Bard said, glaring at ‘Fandes.

“She won—stop that!” Van said to her when she snapped at the Bard to prove his words.

_:Behave! We need him.:_

_:We’d travel faster alone. And much more safely.:_

_:We’ve been over this: he can get us closer to Leareth than we can get alone. He knows where to find him and can keep us from stumbling into him, blind.:_

She lapsed into sullen silence.

He finished strapping down what meager supplies he dared pack, knowing he’d already be pushing her to carry two.

_:You’re a feather. And that Bard’s even smaller,:_ she grumped.

He stroked her neck and rested his head against her for a moment. _:Be kind, dear heart. I swear, we need him. I don’t think we can do what we must without him.:_

Her ears pricked. _:You have a plan?:_ she asked hopefully. He knew she’d never cared for the first one—straight confrontation and probably Final Strike, if the mage was as powerful as Vanyel’s dreams had long foretold—and it hadn’t changed enough to trouble her with it yet. If anything, he knew she’d like what he thinking now even less.

_:I’m considering options,:_ he answered diplomatically, but she knew him too well to take much encouragement from that.

Van mounted with the ease of long practice and held his hand down for Stefen. He’d been content to leave everything behind but his gittern: a true penitent or just a true Bard, Van couldn’t decide, but when the boy grasped his arm, he pulled him up behind him to ride pillion. ‘Fandes didn’t have the right saddle for it but they’d have to make do.

* * *

They were still in sight of the ruined hall when Yfandes jerked her head and stared off towards the west.

_:Riders,:_ she warned him and broke in a run in the opposite direction, kicking up snow in their wake. The unexpected burst of speed had the Bard grabbing at Van’s waist. He patted the boy’s hand but kept his focus on the forest around them.

_:Should we go back to investigate?:_ he wondered.

_:No,:_ she answered, her mind-voice unusually dark. _:You want to go see what Leareth is up to. That’s where we’ll go. I just hope you’re right that we can trust this Bard.:_

Van and ‘Fandes both swept the surrounding woods and hills for signs of other people as they rode, but they found only the small, quiet minds of animals around them.

Yfandes corrected her course once she and Vanyel were certain that they’d bypassed the riders she’d sensed closer to the keep, though they crossed twice more with the path the riders had cut through the forests, marked clearly in churned snow and broken underbrush.

In so wide an expanse as this hard, northern country, it was sheer luck that Yfandes stumbled out into Rendan and Tan’s campsite—except that they were clearly backtracking the path the other riders had taken and obviously they’d been here first.

Both of the men were frozen, stripped to the skin, flesh gone blue and crystalline. They were hideously curled, preserved in their death throes as they’d been impaled on solid wooden stakes, driven like flagpoles into the ground around their dead campfire.

Rendan looked _less_ anguished, perhaps already dead, or dead quickly after he’d been impaled, hanging limp on the pole that nevertheless kept even his lower-dangling leg a good foot off the ground. Tan had not been so lucky it seemed; both of his hands were frozen in rigor and ice around the part of the pole that protruded from his stomach, as though he’d fought to drag himself up or off.

“Gods!” Stefen breathed. “Uwald’s men got them.”

“You can tell who did this?”

“Uwald likes to take eyes, tongues, and…privates. Feeds them to his hounds. Says it keeps them hungry for hunting more,” he answered faintly, breaking up his words like he was fighting not to be sick.

Van had assumed that carrion birds had done that, but now that Stefen suggested otherwise it did seem unlikely that even the most determined scavenger could have braved the ever-worsening weather just to eat those parts alone, without even nibbling at anything else.

“If Uwald did this to Rendan, he’ll have gone over afterwards to check the keep…” the Bard continued after a moment, as ‘Fandes turned and picked up the pace to put the campsite behind them.

_:Definitely our riders, then,:_ ‘Fandes thought, mind deliberately blank about the scene they’d just left.

“…and if Rendan told them about you before they took his tongue—”

“They’ll be coming after us,” Van said.

* * *

The snow never seemed to stop falling, an endless, suffocating blanket, darkening the sky and clinging to them with a determined tackiness that made Van think of spider’s webs, even as it dragged at Yfandes’ hooves.

The day wore onto night in a relentless blur of cold and snow and black, twisted branches reaching towards them while cracked black stones jutted from snowdrifts, blocking their way.

In a distressingly short time Vanyel began to feel the weariness weighing on him again. He’d done nothing but rest for nearly four days, but the speed at which he’d forced his body to heal had a price too, aside from the magic itself, and it was hard to stay awake in the saddle.

Even so, he’d thought he was handling it until he felt the Bard shaking his shoulder to rouse him from the doze he’d fallen into.

“We have to stop,” Stefen said.

“You can rest later,” he snapped. “We need to get as far as we can before we camp for the night.”

“I _can_ rest later, but you and your lady are about to tumble over.”

The chiding in Stefen’s voice turned Van’s foggy thoughts to Yfandes, who had slowed to little more than a regular horse’s walking pace, her head down and ears folded back against the driving wind.

_:’Fandes?:_

_:I’m fine!:_ she answered, as snappish as he’d been, and he smiled ruefully.

“How far are we from Crookback Pass?”

He could feel the heavy, borrowed cloaks around them shift as the Bard moved, trying to take stock of where they were. “We’re—oh!” he sounded surprised, as though until just now he hadn’t recognized the pace the Companion had kept to all day, which was likely, as monotonous as their surroundings were. But the distant mountains they’d faced that morning were now considerably less distant. “About another day, riding like this? Maybe less?”

_:Sounds good enough to me, love.:_ he told her gently and though she didn’t respond immediately, she did come to a halt.

He’d done his best to strengthen and restore his own magical reserves with power tapped from local ley lines, but he was afraid to take too much, in case their enemy was watching those rivers and streams of power that ran through the land he’d already laid claim to. It was mostly because of Yfandes’ support that he was doing as well as he was, but that meant his recovery was taking a toll on her as well.

_:Then it’s good enough for me.:_ She relaxed enough to allow her own weariness to color her mind-voice. He leaned forward to scratch between her ears.

_:I’m sorry,:_ he told her, with a deep and true regret. His dearest friend and look what he was doing—

_:They were my friends too, Van,:_ she thought at him firmly, sending him images of Shonsea, Rohan, and Kellen, as well as their Heralds, but this time she showed them as they had all been in better days, conspirators in joy, consolers in sorrow. _:And Valdemar is my country. I love you, Chosen, but with you or with another, I would be just as determined to meet this threat.:_

She sounded almost apologetic over the last, but he found it was a comfort to him. Of course, she was so much to him that he could forget that their bond had been forged for more than their own sakes; and it was what they valued as much as who and what they were that made that made that bond so strong.

_:I’m making it about me again, aren’t I, love?:_ he asked with a sheepish chuckle.

She tossed her head in a weary, playful nod while she took them a bit further, to the shelter of an outcropping of tall rocks.

The Bard staggered and groaned when he dismounted, shaking himself like a wet dog and obviously fighting shaky legs, and Van smirked but didn’t comment.

There’s one point for the older set, he thought smugly.

_:Or just the set who’s more used to being in a saddle for days on end without rest.:_

He just laughed, not so tired he couldn’t call up a little bubble of warmth as he’d done every night on the way north, creating a small, temporary shelter from the cold inside a broken circle of standing stones, so he could focus on stripping Yfandes’ tack and gear and getting her warmed and rubbed down.

“Can you start a fire?” he asked the Bard, who’d taken off one glove and was waving his bare hand through the balmy air and looking as startled as he had when he’d realized how far they’d traveled in a day. He hadn’t seemed to notice yet that below his boots the snow was fast melting away, exposing dry ground and scrub. He jumped a little when he did but managed a strangled “Sure?” and he focused on the hunt for enough kindling to hide his discomfort with Van’s display of casual power.

_:I’d get on you for showing off…:_

_:…but?:_ he inquired, not used to her restraint.

_:But I don’t care, as long as we get warmed up,:_ she sighed.

* * *

Once they were warmed and the small fire was crackling Van relaxed his hold on that shield against the weather. The difference was instantaneous, but he didn’t want to drain himself more than he had to. He’d keep it warm enough for them not to freeze in their bedrolls and to keep Yfandes from stiffening up overnight but that didn’t require it to be comfortable.

He noticed Stefen’s sudden shiver, but the boy didn’t complain, just finished his share of the jerky and travel bread, and stared morosely at the fire between them.

He’d been there for many of the atrocities the bandits had remembered, if only the ones where victims were dragged back to the keep, and obviously he had knowledge of the dealings of other brigand bands in the area as well. Was he haunted by the memory of the campsite they’d stumbled on that morning, or was it old hat to a jaded young psyche?

Vanyel still wondered at that, even while he was drifting off again. He’d crawled into his bedroll before he’d let the warming spell slip, and curled up beside Yfandes’ big warm body as well.

Stefen finished his meal and took to his bedroll not long after, looking alone and small and young.

For the first time in a while, Van didn’t dream of ice and snow. He didn’t dream of his last stand, alone in a mountain pass, choosing to die so he could take his enemy with him.

He dreamed of late spring sun, and a field of wildflowers outside Haven. He was young again, riding Yfandes while she galloped with joyous ease through a bright, warm day, Tylendel laughing behind him, riding pillion. Lendel’s arms were around him, his chest at Vanyel’s back, surrounding him with love and laughter and just that _presence_ that he missed, that he would never stop missing.

Van cried, even though he wanted to hold on to the feeling of peace he’d felt at first, but Lendel soothed him with wordless nonsense and kissed his cheek. “Soon, Van. We’re so close!”

* * *

What was ‘soon’ to an immortal boy, living in a world of eternally bright and beautiful days? A warning? A promise? A consolation?

Van didn’t have the chance to obsess over it, or whether the dream was anything but wishful thinking: there was someone else, besides the Bard, in their camp.

It was subtle, but he knew the crunch of boots on snow, especially the creeping crunch of someone trying to be quiet. Perhaps it had even been what had woken him.

He opened his eyes and saw the Bard. He’d been up for a while, by the look of him, sitting by the fire, cross-legged, with his cloak and his bedroll both wrapped around his shoulders. The firelight made him glow, his auburn hair an echo of the flame, framed before the dark trunk of the tree that, many decades ago, had interrupted the circle of standing stones, and who’s thick, overhanging branches had given it a roof.

Had Stefen betrayed them after all?

As though in answer the boy met Van’s eyes and shook his head. _Play dead,_ he mouthed.

_:Vanyel?:_ Yfandes’ mind-voice was slurred but he got the sense of her rising concern as she began to shift behind him.

_:Be still,:_ he told her.

_:You’re trusting him?:_ she demanded, quickly apprised of the situation. Though she heeded him and seemed to settle down again, even as he had, it was only because he was lying half against her that he was able to feel the tension still in her body.

_:Let’s see how it plays out,:_ he said, trusting to instinct that had served him better in conflict than his spotty Gift of ForSight ever had.

The crunching stopped. Just because Van was willing to wait and see what the boy was planning to do didn’t mean he didn’t mentally sweep the area to find out what was against them. Four minds, one Gifted, though modestly by the standards of most Heralds except—yes, that one was also a mage.

_:Spread out for an ambush.:_ Her distrust of the Bard radiated along their link. She wanted to be gone. He could roll a bit and mount as she stood and they could be off before the youth got to his feet. Long before the four humans closing in on their camp could reach them, if he’d give in to her urging.

_:And leave Stefen to them?:_

_:What of it, if he’s one of theirs?:_

Still, he’d been counting more on the fact that between himself and Yfandes they were more than a match for four toughs from the northern woods, even if one was a mage.

“Who goes?” Stefen called, sounding emphatically bored, in the way that only the young truly can.

After a moment there was a more obvious scraping of boots through the snow—and a chuckle, though only one person stepped from the shadows outside the standing stones into the light of the fire. The mage, Vanyel could tell, by the not entirely clean pulse of his power in the small campsite. A blood mage.

“Stefen! My boy! Passing through our land again. And you weren’t going to stop by the hold and make your hullos to old Gerlac?” the voice was low, husky, not with a cold or even with artifice, but as though the speaker had had some damage done to it at one time.

“No, Viga, I wasn’t. I barely made it away from Saski the last time I visited, I have no intention of giving her a chance to paw at me again.” Now he just sounded annoyed.

The mage laughed again, louder, with a nasty edge. “Oh, you just don’t know how to take the affections of a real, warrior woman. She was just trying to express her admiration of your fine… _gittern_ playing.”

“I’m not interested in ‘taking’ the affections of any woman, as well you know. And I’m on Master’s Dark’s business now. I certainly don’t have time for any of Saski’s foolishness. He’d do worse than skin us both if I kept him waiting because of her.”

“Master Dark’s business, you say? You don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry right now, playing campout with your pretty friend there.” He knew who Vanyel was, Van was certain.

The Bard snorted, calling him on it. “C’m’off it Vig, you know who that is and what my business is.”

“He looks very cozy for a captive,” the mage said, finally voicing his suspicions.

“Cozy enough to not cause trouble.”

“Master Dark’s powder should have him a senseless lump. It’s only the two of you here, and his horse—and that one we had orders to kill. You expect me to believe you’re strong enough to manhandle him and control his horse, all the way from Rendan’s hold to Master Dark? Where are Lord Rendan’s men? What are you up to?”

The mage knew of the powder?

_:And his Master Dark’s plans for me? Was your little Bard not the only one he sent for us? Do this fool and his friends have some of that damned powder too?:_

 Stefen yawned. “The powder didn’t work quite as Master Dark said it would. Or the Herald’s stronger than he’d expected, either way. He broke out of it. Several times. Took four doses just to get him quiet enough for Tan and I to drag him back to the keep. Then that idiot Rendan didn’t believe me that he wasn’t as far gone as the Master’s envoy had said he’d be and wanted to rough him up a bit, just for the sport of having one of those boys in white at his mercy.”

Stefen paused.

“Shoulda listened. The fucker woke up and leveled the place.”

“But not you?”

“I’m not an idiot,” he sneered. “When I saw Rendan wasn’t gonna stop I ducked out to the stables, didn’t go back until the hole he punched in the roof stopped smoking. Found him in the middle of the mess, weak as a babe and dosed him—double—again.”

“And the horse?” the mage wasn’t buying it.

“Dumb thing got away from me when I got the Herald—what good am I supposed to be with a godsdamned blow gun? Worked out okay though, the ponies all broke clear through that rotted old paddock gate when the keep went _boom,_ but she showed up, blood in her eye, not long after, and I dosed her too.”

“And how did you get them all the way up here by yourself?” No, he wasn’t buying it at all.

Van readied himself to go for his short sword, hidden under a fold of his bedroll. How much good it would do if the mage did have more of that powder, he didn’t know, but perhaps he could throw the man off with a physical attack, when he was prepared for a magical one, and take him out before he could use it. And just hope that his three cohorts, still lingering out of sight, hadn’t been armed with it as well.

“Music,” the Bard answered, sounding startling self-satisfied.

“Music?” the mage asked, as confused as Van felt.

A quick, waterfall trill of notes rang out from that beat up old gittern Stefen had kept at his side since they’d left the remains of Lord Rendan’s keep.

“Herald, stand!” he commanded, in a theatrically deeper voice, speaking over a lilting melody.

…Okay…

_:There’s no way this will work,:_ ‘Fandes fretted as Van slowly rose, keeping his movements deliberately mechanical, opening his eyes but leaving them unfocused.

“Horse, stand!” With a deep, only slightly annoyed mental grunt, ‘Fandes clambered to her feet as well.

“You see?” Stefen asked in apparent glee.

“They obey you…as long as you’re playing?” the mage’s voice had gone faint.

“Of course! Here, look—Herald, raise your right arm.”

Lord and Lady, this was a farce!

But he obeyed.

“Horse, take one pace forward—Horse, lift your left foreleg—Horse, sidestep right.”

Fandes’ cursing was quite imaginative.

_:Don’t think humans bend that way, dearest.:_

_:He will when I’m done with him.:_

“See? But without the music? Nothing.” The gittern fell silent. “Herald, stand on one foot.”

This time Vanyel stayed as he was.

The mage approached him slowly. He tried to make it seem he was still relaxed and unaware of the world around him, but he desperately wished he’d left his sword strapped to him instead of hiding it in the bedroll.

“Wouldn’t, if I were you,” Stefen said, just as the mage’s fingers hovered inches from Van’s cheek. “Remember what I said about Rendan’s messing with him? He doesn’t seem to ever be under that deep.”

The extended hand clenched quickly into a fist and then fell back to the mage’s side. He turned on the Bard.

“This isn’t how the powder is supposed to work! How can this be?” he demanded.

Stefen shrugged. “What do I know? Am I a mage? All I know is—” he started picking out a melody again, something slow and low and dangerous. “I play my little gittern that Master Dark gave me, and that Herald over there does whatever I tell him to.”

It was a threat, a surprisingly clever, and hopefully effective one if the mage actually bought it: that Van’s magic was not suppressed, but subject to the Bard’s song, and that if Van himself were bothered he’d break free of the control of the powder entirely and the mage would face him in truth. Even the implication that the powder was too weak to contain him and it took multiple doses, while painfully untrue, seemed to undermine the mage’s earlier confidence. It was an insane, impossible bluff and the Bard…was pulling it off.

“They’re not very good company, but I won’t have to worry about that for much longer, as soon as I hand them off to the Master. I suppose, long as you made me get them up, we may as well continue on our way. You’ll give Gerlac and Saski my regards?” He never stopped playing, and Vanyel could feel the _push_ behind the notes that said Stefen’s Gift was at play, lending the wordless song a deeply foreboding air.

The trees and bare stone around them suddenly seemed like they might hide more than just this mage’s friends. Worse things, by far. But perhaps the worst possible thing to face was standing right behind the mage, in this camp—

The young man was really very good.

“Uh—ahem, yes, yes—of course! It’s always nice when you pass through, Stefen, my lad. I do hope you come back soon. And stay longer then.” But not any longer now, was the unspoken addendum. “Must be off,” he said, disappearing back the way he’d come, into tall stone- and tree-shadow.

Vanyel stood, not relaxing, though Yfandes was comfortingly at his back, and the Bard sat before him, still playing—while he watched the disquieted minds of the mage and his companions flee.

Only when he felt them pass too far to have thoughts of an easy return did he let his shoulders slump and a sigh escape him. “By the gods, you actually did it!” he muttered, wonderingly.

Stefen finally stilled the disturbing song and grinned up at him, a blinding flash of teeth and joy. “I did, didn’t I?”

_:Bard Breda always has said a talented enough Bard could talk themselves out of_ anything. _:_

But Stefen’s smile quickly fell and he cast a look over his shoulder at the direction the mage had gone. “We should go, though. In case Viga starts thinking it over and decides to come back to test my story more after all. If you’re so determined to see what Master Dark’s been doing, better with me than with Gerlac’s men. They’re not much better than Uwald and his—I did warn you everyone would be looking for you, fighting to be the one who gets to hand you over.”

Van nodded. “We need food for Yfandes, then we can go.”

* * *

All to the better that despite her complaints at the way he’d ordered her around, Yfandes too had been rather impressed with Stefen’s quick thinking and ability to sell his own unlikely lie. She’d softened to him, a little, and had come to trust him, just a bit.

The ride towards the Ice Wall Mountains and Crookback Pass, the only reasonable way through those mountains, was spent much as the day before had been: coursing through an unchanging landscape of white and gray and black, beset by the snow and wind and bitter cold of the storms that raged anew each day.

Leareth’s work, he was certain of it now, though he wished he’d realized it when he’d still been at his own border and could have safely interfered with the weather patterns; now he didn’t dare. All his plans hinged on Leareth not realizing that Van was so close and still free.

But where the day before had been marked by weariness, today was tinged by the high alert of a battle about to be joined. By Stefen’s word, they should reach the pass by tonight. Come morning, Van would know exactly what lay on the other side.

They would take a short rest somewhere outside the pass for Yfandes, but then they would ride through the night, so as not be caught in it. Although he didn’t dare tap any of them, Van was carefully marking the ley lines they passed, in case he had the need and opportunity to use them later. He could feel a node ahead of him, a young one, likely created by Leareth himself and probably it marked the pass, tied to whatever reserves lay in his stronghold beyond the mountains. It was already close enough that he could have tapped into it if he’d had a mind to, which told him how close he was getting to Leareth himself if he’d still had any doubts.

Today it was Stefen who was nodding off, but Vanyel let him. They wouldn’t rest long outside the pass and though he may be young, as Yfandes herself had pointed out, he wasn’t used to spending endless hours on horseback. A Companion’s gate was unnaturally smooth and with his arms around Van it wasn’t too hard to keep them there with a firm grip at one of his wrists. It was pleasant, though a part of him wished it were less so, to have him draped across his back, arms around him like a lover. Though that simple, guilty pleasure felt like more of a betrayal of Lendel than the brief relationships he’d had over the years since his death.

_:You like the Bard, in spite of what he did,:_ ‘Fandes commented tiredly, but he knew it wasn’t the exertion that put that tone in her mind-voice. They were close and they both knew how this would likely end.

_:He paid for it.:_ Though Van still tried not to linger on those memories of his time in Lord Rendan’s keep. _:And he saved us this morning. If we’d tried to fight, even if we’d tried to run, that mage and his friends might have caught us with more of that powder. He’s a good ally:_

_:And?:_

He chuckled at her. _:And he’s pleasant company. Nice to look at, nice to listen to, and…interesting. I’m glad that we aren’t making this journey alone.:_ Though for more than one reason.

_:…Are you ever going to tell me what you’re planning?:_

He’d been guiltily braced to hear hurt in her mind-voice when she finally confronted him on what she had to have known he was keeping silent. Instead she just sounded resigned and that was somehow worse. As long as they’d known each other she’d been nothing but a source of love and support and if his dream was the ForeSight it seemed, and his fate already set, he didn’t want what were possibly their last hours together to be spent this way. _:Tonight, love,:_ he promised. _:I’m…not actually sure I’m ready to talk about it yet.:_

Her response was wordless, a wash of pure emotion: the love that had saved him following after a broken lifebond, the love that had stood beside him through learning his powers, through war and through political machinations, the love that would make a lie of his ice dream, if only the part where he faced his end alone.

* * *

When they reached the mouth of the pass and after Van and ‘Fandes both swept it for magic traps or men waiting in ambush, they found a small protected space at the base of the Ice Wall Mountains themselves.

Vanyel cleared only enough snow for a fire and saw that Yfandes was fed and comfortable for a quick rest—then left her with Stefen. The Bard tried to protest, but Van waved him away. Vanyel wouldn’t let his guard down again and he certainly wasn’t going to sleep.

He sat himself on a flat stone, well away from ‘Fandes and Stefen. With a sigh, he pulled out all eight of the remaining packets of the powder and laid them out on his legs.

_:So, Chosen? Will you tell me what this terrible plan is now?:_

_:I will,:_ he told her, _:And I’m hoping you will help me prepare—:_


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find out more about Stef's relationship with Leareth. 
> 
> (Again, mind the warnings.)

Stefen felt ready to crawl out of his skin at any moment. They were so close to Master Dark already. It was just the pass between them now and Stefen hated crossing through that narrow, dangerous way, the mountains to either side like two frozen oceans, or one, divided, and only waiting for the perfect moment to come crashing back together and smash whatever insignificant creature was stupid enough to try to ford them.

The Herald, the whole reason he was doing this, didn’t even seem to care. The closer they’d gotten, the cooler he’d become. Stefen wanted to shake him until he expressed some of the terror he ought to be feeling, if only so Stefen could feel less alone in it—except he’d seen the man blow out the roof of a keep without half trying and kill almost twenty men with frightening little effort, and that after being beaten bloody and broken. No, Stefen wasn’t making a move on _that_ one in anger.

The Herald and Master Dark might just be well matched in more than appearance. …if the Herald had brought an army with him, a few dozen magical monsters from the Palagirs, a score of lesser mages to drain of power and life and hope…

At least he probably _was_ fine going off by himself here, though Stefen had tried pointlessly to argue with him about it at first. But no one came this far north without express invitation from Master Dark. No one who was hunting him would even consider he might be so close already; this was possibly as safe as they could be, short of on the other side of the continent.

The Herald had told him ominously to “rest while he could,” as though there was any chance of that, before taking off for whatever solitary errand he was pursuing. Stefen’d napped a little on that uppity horse and now sick dread was churning his innards, making him shiver more than the cold even as he huddled over the small fire the Herald had left.

When that horse, that Companion, let out a terrified call and half rose to her feet from the lying position, he jumped to his own in a panic, his dagger drawn, pointed out at the dark, wondering what the hell she’d caught wind of. After a moment, with no attackers and no more noise from her behind him, he turned to find she’d settled back into her previous position and was only staring wide-eyed and mouth agape, into the darkness.

No. No, she wasn’t staring at anything, he realized after a moment, another shiver racking him; she was talking to her Herald, and apparently not liking what he was saying to her.

Stefen retook his place, huddled so close to the flames he was at genuine risk of his clothes catching fire. Gods, it was creepy.

He suspected he was missing most of the times they were “talking” but he’d caught it often enough: the sudden blank expression of one or the other as their focus turned inward, the gestures, a turn of the head, a sudden pat or stroke, the shifting of the Companion to be closer to him, all hints of a constant flow of conversation going on around Stefen’s head.

And thank the gods for that! He shivered again.

He couldn’t imagine anything worse than a relationship that unnecessarily close. Someone _always_ in the back of your head—more than bad enough the times Master Dark had strutted through his, thanks—how horrible and invasive it would be to have someone just…always there?

And how much worse would it be when they turned on you? he wondered, since in his experience everyone always did, eventually.

He kept his eye on her. She was supposed to be resting. She’d run all day after their early start, and would run all or most of the night just to get them to the other side of the pass. Hopefully she’d run all the next day—or several—afterwards, to get them well away from here once the Herald had seen what he wanted of Master Dark’s forces. 

Stefen still couldn’t stop feeling guilty, even though this clearly wasn’t about him. Whatever was between the Herald and Stefen’s Master had been going on longer than he’d been involved. But that didn’t let Stefen off the hook for bringing the Herald, helpless, to Rendan, orders or no.

Guilt was idiotic. Pointless. A privilege for people with wealth and power and real choices in life. But that didn’t mean a penniless boy couldn’t feel it.

He knew what would take the edge off, the only thing that would, and he ached for it with a desperation that made his fingers almost fumble on the strings of his gittern, which he didn’t remember breaking out though he was glad to fall into the music when he noticed it.

It was almost as good. There was a time it had been better; when the music had been the nexus of all his hopes. Now even the music couldn’t stop him feeling the flask tucked tight in its hidden pocket against his chest, and hearing the sweet call of it.

He’d be useless if he gave in. He owed the Herald a clear head until he got him where he wanted to go, no matter how futile the Herald’s desire to see the Master’s work was.

His fingers tripped off into a faster tune, loosing some of his frantic tension in racing, tumbling notes. As quickly as he wished to be flying away from here, his fingertips strummed the strings. He was panting when he finished the song, heart pounding.

His eyes slid over the Companion. She was lying down now, as if she was dozing, but he suspected she was still in contact with her absent Herald. He wondered how far their mental link extended.

He moved into a softer, gentler song then. He didn’t call on his pain blocking gift, but he did weave a bit of restfulness into the melody. _Peace,_ he played, until he felt the calmness rising in himself. _Nothing but now._ No use feeling guilty over what was past, no point worrying about what they would face in the morning; for now, there was rest.

It didn’t last. The Herald returned a bit later, striding out of the snow that had started falling again, like a creature of the snows himself, even if he was wearing the drab brown of the Rendan’s unfashionable bandits instead of his ruined Heraldic Whites. The silver in his hair and in his eyes was more than enough to make him seem a creature of an elemental winter, and the calm surety of his too-pale face made him seem more than human.

The longer he had spent with him, the more superficial his similarities to Master Dark had seemed. As the paler one, of eye and hair anyway, Stefen would have thought he’d have appeared the…weaker. More worn, more aged, and in some ways that was true, but age and care made him seem more real than Master Dark, and made the dark mage feel more and more like an imperfect copy, crafted by a talented but uninspired artist.

The Herald went straight to his horse, who stood, not waiting for a word or visible sign, so he could fit her gear back on her again.

Without being told, Stefen put away his gittern and quenched the fire.

“’Fandes says to thank you for the music,” the Herald said, without turning from his work.

Startled, Stefen looked at her, as though to check her expression—as though a horse’s face could have revealed whether that was truth or mockery.

* * *

The ride through the night was by far the worst part of the journey, as Stefen had expected. The pass was dangerous, narrow, and the crags of the mountains on either side made dark, looming silhouettes against the sky. The wind funneled through the pass, a mad, howling thing, raging and frigid and even with the Herald in front of him, shielding him from the teeth of the beast, he couldn’t stop imagining the damage frostbitten fingers would wreak on his musical abilities.

That was still less terrifying than the thought of being in Master’s Dark’s presence again if he found them before Stefen could convince the Herald to run away.

And he didn’t want to think about what the Master would do if he found Stefen with the Herald and realized he _hadn’t_ been bringing him to turn over. Frostbit fingers would be an easy fate in comparison, even if he never played an instrument again.

The Herald patted one of his hands, and he realized he was probably holding on to the man far too tightly but he couldn’t make his grip loosen.

“The end of the pass will be guarded,” the Herald said, turning his head and shouting over the wind.

Stefen nodded against the Herald’s back, though he understood it had not been a question.

“I’ll set a Seeming on us—an illusion. Keep quiet and stay down and close to my back and I promise they won’t see us.”

 Stay down and close? That wasn’t a problem; Stefen buried his face in the Herald’s cloak, trying hard to regulate his breathing. He’d been feigning indifference to the world since he was a child. But he couldn’t pretend indifference to Master Dark, pride be damned.

He was so lost in his fears he didn’t even notice them passing the guards that Master Dark had set at the northern entrance of the pass.

The Herald’s gasp and sudden stiffness was his sign that they were probably in sight of the stronghold. He sighed.

* * *

The Herald had cut east as soon as he’d reached the open snow plains north of the pass. The Companion found a small ridge of stone that curved up along the mountains, taking them high enough to look down over Master Dark’s work.

Stefen finally forced himself to look as well.

There was a straight path from the entrance of Crookback Pass to the grand front gates of Master Dark’s keep. Though calling it a “keep” was doing the elegant structure a grave disservice: it was a small palace, pulled from a child’s song, multi-towered, sparkling with glass even from such a distance, pennants flying, with high walls surrounding a courtyard that somehow enclosed a lush and verdant garden, even in the heart of this wintery land. It was all well suited to the powerful and vain man who’d made it his seat and stronghold.

But Stefen had seen all that before.

New to him, though it was little surprise, was the army camped around the keep, filling an uncomfortable amount of the landscape. It crowded the plains almost to the horizon, it surrounded the keep, it was gathered around that road between it and the pass, and Stefen could already imagine the spectacle that the Master had planned: him riding out of those gates on something that wasn’t a horse, along that clear, open road, his men falling in behind him as he rode through them, taking the vanguard and leading them through that pass into the southern land—and then to Valdemar.

Stefen knew he’d been gathering an army, allying with and subjugating many of the tribes of peaceful  and not-so-peaceful caribou herders who’d once controlled the northern country.

He sighed wearily. You could even see where some of the beasts were being held: both summoned mage beasts and wild things captured from the Pelagirs. The former would obey their Master’s command, the latter could be set free and driven before the army to sow chaos in his enemy’s ranks.

The mages weren’t as visible, but Stefen knew they were there too, likely in the keep with Master Dark himself. Some would be blood mages, willing acolytes of such a powerful dark mage, hoping to learn enough at his knee to one day overthrow him. Others were captives and slaves, brought to be drained of magic and of life, their blood forfeit to the Master’s spells. That was the end that Herald Vanyel was courting. He was powerful, as Stefen had seen, but Master Dark was unstoppable. Hopefully now, looking over the forces he had gathered, the Herald would finally understand that.

“You see?” he demanded, though his voice was dull with exhaustion. “You can’t stop him. Go back to your country—maybe if you raise your army you can hold him off.” _For a while_.

He and the Herald dismounted, the Herald still disturbingly silent.

“I need you to do something for me, Stefen,” he finally said, slowly, as though the words were difficult for him. They probably were, a high and mighty Herald asking for help from a backwoods thug. But for some reason the way he said his name made Stefen shiver. It was foreboding, he decided. Trouble. And the way the Companion turned away from them both as the Herald spoke only made his heart sink lower.

“…yes…?”

The Herald turned to face him and pulled out one of the packets of Master Dark’s powder. Stefen stared at it in confusion.

“I need you to take me to your Master Dark.”

He forgot the powder. “What?”

The Herald grabbed his hand and pressed the paper packet into his glove. “Use this and take me to your Master.”

Stefen didn’t even think, he dropped the little envelope of powder and staggered away as though he’d been attacked instead of…whatever this was. “You’re mad!” he said, but to his own ears his voice was the voice of a child, shrill and frightened.

And perhaps the Herald saw him that way too: he looked regretful but determined, picking up the packet and following Stefen, then following again when Stefen couldn’t help falling back another step.

“I can use it on myself, I suppose,” the Herald said, sounding remarkably understanding for a man who’d gone completely off his head, allowing the hand that still held the powder fall to his side. “But I’ll still need you to take me to Lea—to Master Dark.”

Stefen was already shaking his head. “I won’t do that. I won’t—you’re mad!” he finished again, faintly and even vaguely plaintive.

He looked at the horse, thinking this had to be some strange test. She’d turn on him in a second and trample him to bloody bits in the snow for even listening to this. But she’d stayed where they’d dismounted, staring out over the plains as though memorizing the view, not turning at all to look at them.

Catching the direction of his gaze the Herald sighed. “She doesn’t like it, but she’s agreed with me. It’s the only way: Yfandes will go back to Valdemar and raise the Heralds, she can tell them through the other Companions, she can _show_ them exactly what we’re facing here. That army—” He waved at Master’s Dark’s troops, a camp that stretched from the mountains to the distant horizon. “—they’re almost ready to march. The standing army of Valdemar will never assemble and make it here in time to hold them back, but Heralds on Companions might at least reach the pass…perhaps. Master Dark’s number won’t matter so much if we can catch him before the bulk of his forces are through.”

Stefen lifted his chin. “Then good, the two of you go back and get the other Heralds—”

But the Herald was already shaking his head. “They can take on the army, but Master Dark is a different matter. He’ll have mages, feeding him and strengthening his shields…?”

Stefen nodded so stiffly he was half surprised his neck didn’t snap like a brittle branch under the sharp jerk of his head.

“…and we’ll never be able to touch him. Not from any distance, and with as many troops as he cares to hide behind to keep assassins at bay.”

And Stefen began to understand. He snorted. “And what sort of assassin will _you_ be? Blind and deaf and helpless because of that stuff—”

The Herald smiled in weary triumph. “Don’t you know? The powder doesn’t affect me the way Master Dark designed it to.”

Stefen waved his hands wide. “Master Dark will never buy that stupid story I told Viga! I still can’t believe Viga bought it, but Master Dark’s no small-minded hedge wizard.”

The Herald caught one of his hands and held it between them, stepping close and using it to keep Stefen from trying to back away again. “Yfandes and I made some changes to my personal shields. Nothing Master Dark should notice, but that powder _will_ affect me differently now. I won’t lose all my senses, and though it will block my magic, it will leave a sort of backdoor in the walls that hem my powers in. It shouldn’t be visible to your Master Dark, but I’ll be able to use it to bring down the shields against me when I’m ready to.”

“And if he kills you right off?” Stefen asked quietly, a rising wave of despair peaking over him as he realized the futility of trying to talk the Herald out of this suicide mission. Was this what it always felt like to be standing with a hero as the makings of a ballad were aligning around you? A terrible, doomed sort of feeling. “Or if he doses you with something stronger once he has you?”

Those strange, pale eyes were as gentle as his grip on Stefen’s wrist. “He’s been waiting too long for me to kill me out of hand.”—at least that was likely true—“And I suspect he’ll have other ways he’ll want to ‘play’ once he has me.”

Shite. That was probably true too. Stefen gnawed at the inside of his cheek.

_But if I take you to him that means I’m giving_ myself _to him too!_ he wanted to whine. Just because the Herald didn’t care if he threw his life to Master Dark it didn’t mean that Stefen shared that same casual disregard for his own skin.

But the grave expression on the Herald’s face suggested he knew very well what he was asking and it left Stefen squirming under the steady weight of that implacable, saintly calm. Stefen had never pretended to be a hero and he sure as hell had no delusions of sainthood.

_He’ll go to the Master without you,_ a voice whispered in the back of his head. _Alone._ _Surrounded by the Master’s sycophants, he’ll suffer—and probably_ die _—alone._

And for some reason selfish, practical Stefen couldn’t bear the thought of the Herald facing that fate. Not alone. Not without a single friendly soul to stand beside him. Or knowing his own cowardly, worthless self, to watch helplessly and silently from his place at the Master’s feet.

His throat was closed with fear and something else he couldn’t even name, leaving him able only to nod his assent.

* * *

The horse had nuzzled the Herald for a long moment, and aimed a stern, searching gaze on Stefen.

_:If I find out you betrayed us, the gods themselves will not keep you from_ my _justice.:_

He staggered at the clear, dangerous female voice ringing through his head.

_You can talk to me?_

For once it was the Herald, his arms wrapped around his Companion’s neck in bittersweet parting, who was left out of the conversation. Behind his back, she bared her teeth.

_:I can do more than you guess. More than even_ he _knows. Take care of my Chosen.:_

As she turned and left them there on the side of a mountain, her stony gaze passed over him but didn’t linger.

Watching her go, he got a better sense of the speed with which she moved. He’d known she had to have been near to flying to get them to the pass so quickly, but seeing her from this new vantage he found she almost seemed to vanish as she ran, leaping, and disappearing, and reappearing again several ground-devouring strides further ahead. He blinked away the odd observation, certain it was some trick of the light on the snow and her equally snowy hide.

_Then if you care so much for him, come back for him as quickly as you can!_ he thought a her, but he had no idea if she could still hear him or was still listening or…whatever, and there was no reply.

The Herald turned on Stefen and held out the packet again, with an almost sheepish smile. He’d use it on himself if Stefen wouldn’t, he’d already said as much and he seemed about ready to do just that.

Gods above and below, save him from heroes.

Stefen snatched the little packet. He’d unfolded the first flap when the Herald stopped him.

“Wait,” the Herald said, and suddenly held out seven of the powder packets Stefen had given him. “It’ll look suspicious if I have them.” He smiled again, but Sefen knew the expression. _Trust me,_ it said. He’d worn it often enough himself, and usually turned it on people he was about to fleece, one way or another. It irritated him that the Herald was trying it on him. _Amature_ , he thought unkindly, pocketing the other packets and finishing peeling the first one open.

The Herald watched him steadily; a strong, hard breath over the pile of powder cupped in his hand sent it airborne, setting it over the Herald, sparkling for a moment like stardust before it settled and dulled, like a quickly melted frost.

He should have made the Herald move away from the edge of the mountain; it would have been just his luck to end up throwing the man he was trying to protect—gods knew why—off of a cliff.

Fortunately for both of them, but especially for the Herald, it seemed he and the Companion had done as he’d promised and though a shudder chased through him, he didn’t fall and his eyes remained clear. Too clear, perhaps.

Stefen considered him critically for a moment.

“…The Master isn’t going to think you’re under any sort of spell at all…”

The Herald’s mouth quirked. “Oh, he will. It’s easy enough to see and to feel, if you’ve any sense for the Mage Gift.” He rubbed almost absently at his temple, as though a pain was kindling there.

Well the Healer had noticed the “walls” on the Herald’s power easily enough. If that much of the spell had been left, then Master Dark would certainly know. But—

“He’s not going to believe I’m controlling you, with you so…” Stefen waved vaguely with his fingers. “Free?”

“I won’t seem so free by the time you get me to him,” he said, and Stefen wasn’t sure if he meant he was going to pretend to be out of it or that he might actually lose some of his clear-headedness, and he desperately hoped he meant the first, even if he didn’t think the Herald could trick Master Dark like that. “And this will help,” he continued, holding out a coiled length of rope.

Stefen took it, not liking this, any of it, trapped as he’d ever felt and had always been since Master Dark had come into his life. The Herald stood patiently with his wrists pressed together and extended for Stefen’s fumbling attempts to bind them. He was usually a pretty good hand with knots, tying and untying them, but the cold and his gloves and his nerves made his fingers clumsy.

More than that. The siren song of his flask—there was so much he wanted to forget, so much he needed to escape—

He cleared his throat. “I guess…I tell the Master we got attacked by the other bandits he sent hunting you. Tell him I didn’t trust his men after that—he’ll think that’s just _delightful_ , amusing as all fuck—so I snuck you in, past his guards at the pass. He’s a clever bastard but maybe he’ll be so excited to finally have his hands on you he won’t worry too much about how I got us so far without horses…” he trailed off doubtfully.

“You shooed the horses off when we were through the pass, but before we sneaked past his guards.”

“I suppose—”

“And stick to your first story for Yfandes. She got away when you took me from the guard post.”

Stefen shivered at the thought of admitting that to the Master, even though he’d thought the same thing when he’d spared her in the stable. The order had been clear, the Companion was supposed to have been killed. “Couldn’t I just say she’s dead?”

The Herald shook his head and then wove a little on his feet, prompting Stefen to grab his arm and pull him away from the ledge and closer to the mountain. Please, let him be pretending.

“I can’t feign that sort of loss. He’d know if I’d suffered the severing of my Companion bond. It will have to be good enough that he thinks we can’t communicate while I’m blocked like this.”

Good enough to make Stefen pay for failing on half of his orders.

But he squared his shoulders and forced his chin up. It was the Master’s own fault for setting the other bandits on the Herald too. It was a stupid thing to have done; he had to have known they’d squabble over the right to be the ones who turned him over, going at each other like starved dogs over a single, bloody scrap. Gods, he was lucky Stefen had managed to even get the Herald to him under these conditions.

Sometimes the Master was amused when Stefen played cocky. He could hope he was in such a mood today.

* * *

The Master’s guards had never been friends to Stefen. In part because they, like the bandits on the other side of the pass, were never entirely sure where he stood in Master Dark’s regard and in part because they, like the bandits, knew that whatever his place was, he’d bought his way there with his body.

But while he enjoyed the relatively unusual benefit of coming and going with no real oversight, he hadn’t ever before come striding through the front gates bearing company to the Master’s palace. Strange, staggering, bound company at that.

“Who goes?” a guard—Warin—demanded suspiciously, stepping in front of him at the inner gate, and Stefen knew the young captain wasn’t asking for his own credentials.

“A special package for the Master,” Stefen answered, full of swagger and grinning false pride.

The taller man looked over the captive Herald with interest but didn’t immediately stand down. He was cleverer than many of the Master’s men, hence his promotion to captain at such an age, and not too proud to have let Stefen spend more than a few nights in his bed, though he welcomed the pretty kitchen maids there just as eagerly. He wasn’t a bad sort, especially considering many of his brothers-in-arms, and Stefen felt himself holding his breath. If anyone less than the Master and his inner circle of apprentices might recognize the trick, it would probably be Warin, but without magic what would betray them?

Was the rope that Stefen held not bound tightly enough around the Herald’s wrists? Were the Herald’s eyes not glazed and dull enough to mark him as properly subdued? Was—

Warin snorted, cutting through Stefen’s spiraling doubts. “Don’t look much like anything special to me,” he said, his hand sliding from the hilt of his sword as he shifted slightly, though he didn’t actually step away.

For a moment Stefen’s eyes widened, surprised by more than the ‘easy’ deception. Couldn’t Warin see the resemblance between the Herald and their Master? That alone would have been worth a second look—but then, even as a captain, the guard probably hadn’t spent enough time in the Master’s company to be as familiar with his looks as Stefen was, the better for Warin.

Master Dark didn’t spend much time with the lesser ranks of his men, and he had a separate, more carefully curated guard to protect himself and the inner sanctum of the palace: soldiers whose minds had been stripped to little more than mirrors of their Master’s whims; simulacrums, whose eyes were his eyes, whose ears were his, incorruptible, unfeeling, unaffected. Just the muscle memory of the warriors they once had been and the singular, driving will of the man who’d reduced them to nothing more. Yes, better for Warin to stay where he was.

Stefen tossed the captain a saucy smile. “Easy for you to say! You weren’t the one who had to get him here,” he said, leaning a little against the captain to pull his attention from the Herald. Perhaps he was just lucky the man didn’t favor brunets, though he knew _he_ wouldn’t have let the handsome Herald pass by without a second glance, even if he hadn’t been out hunting him.

Warin stepped aside with a laugh and a gallant hand light on Stefen’s elbow to steady him as he did, his eyes gone a bit softer even while his grin took on a sharper edge.

“Off with you then, little bird. I won’t be the one responsible for keeping the Master waiting.’”

* * *

But it was a pair of the Master’s special guards who were waiting.

They were beautiful, the Master wouldn’t bear anyone in his presence who wasn’t, and one of them looked familiar, which Stefen tried not to think about. Had she been friend or foe? Not that it was important anymore; it was at least a relief that she didn’t strike him as familiar enough for him to remember who she’d been.

Now her eyes were blank and empty, like a hauntingly realistic doll. Or a magician’s puppet, dancing on a string.

“We’ll take him,” she said. The mouths never seemed to work quite right, as though the voice that passed between those lips wasn’t theirs.

“But—”

“Master’s orders,” the other one said, and Stefen knew there was no argument to that, even if the special guard could be argued with, which they could not.

He handed the rope off to the woman.

“He knows I brought him? I want my reward!” he whined, glad to imagine that the Herald was as dulled as he looked, and not able to hear Stefen’s weedling tone. It wasn’t entirely an act.

They ignored him though, trudging off down the hall where they’d intercepted him, three clockwork humans in a clockwork castle of stone and glass. Glittering and lovely, but cold and utterly lifeless. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

* * *

The Herald gone and his stomach churning with a worry he couldn’t even name, as if he didn’t have enough whenever he was here, Stefen headed to his own chamber. He’d had bigger when he’d first come, swanning around as Master Dark’s pet, too stupid yet to recognize what a trap he’d leapt right into.

He’d lost it not long into his service, the punishment for some misstep he couldn’t even remember now, there’d been so many missteps and so many punishments since. Losing those big lovely rooms, right by the Master’s, hadn’t been even close to the worst. He shivered again, his teeth almost chattering as he let himself into the small, single room he now occupied whenever he was called to heel.

He froze with the door half open, finding the Master himself sprawled on his bed.

_Oh gods, oh gods, what’s he doing_ here? he thought in panic, his stomach heaving.

“Against all odds, my little hunter returns triumphant!” the Master said, smiling and sitting forward, his dark eyes glittering.

Brave. Sometimes it amused him when Stefen played brave. Although his spine felt like jelly, he straightened it. “Against all odds is right, with every hold in the hills looking for him too. I was starting to think I wouldn’t make it back alive, nevermind get that damned Herald here,” he groused, forcing himself to walk into the room when everything in him was screaming for him to run. He couldn’t run. He knew; he’d tried.

The Master tossed his head back and laughed.

Stefen flinched, hoping he hid it well enough. That laugh always meant suffering, one way or another, and yet it still curled inside him like a warm hand, delicious and wrong all at once. He recognized it as something like his own gift, the barbed hooks in every word and sound the Master made, but that didn’t make him immune to its pull, or make him any less ashamed of feeling it for this man—this man, of all men.

But the closer he was and the longer he spent there the worse it became, his will and even personality draining away, bit by bit.

“Ah, Stef, my sweet Stef. I knew you could handle anything those ruffians would try. I didn’t want you to get bored. Where’s the thrill in an easy victory, hmm?”

All lies. Any of the brigands could have made short work of him and would have if it hadn’t been for the Herald’s Companion carrying them away from danger at a pace no normal horse could have managed to keep up with.

“Well anyway, he’s here now. You wanted him so bad, I’m surprised you’re bothering with me.” He wanted to sound disgruntled, but he knew the words came out sounding jealous. He felt jealous. Why did the Master even want the Herald so bad when he had Stefen? ‘His’ Stefen, who would do anything…

Master Dark stood and Stefen had to force himself not to scurry away like a frightened mouse—or fall to his knees and start licking his feet. He suppressed a shudder and stood his ground.

So the Master came to him.

While Stefen fought desperate, conflicting urges, the Master cupped his cheek and everything else fell away, the whole of his being focused on that hand, that touch. Everything was right when his Master touched him. He sighed and leaned into him, his eyes falling shut, his breath hitching in pleasure.

“Why Stef! You’re no bother…” His Master’s voice was a song, the melody that Stefen’s heart and his blood and his very soul sang. He’d do anything to please him.

There was something he was supposed to say… _I love you. I worship you._ No—

“That dust didn’t work on the Herald like you said,” he babbled, his tongue somehow bypassing the song in his head. “He didn’t go down all the way like you said he would. He’s just quiet, like one of your guards—”

“Shhh…that’s fine. It’s fine.”

He’d been afraid the Master would be mad. So afraid. The light amusement in his Master’s voice set off another wave of pleasure that made Stefen’s toes curl in his boots and wrung a sigh from deep in his chest.

“And the horse got away,” he continued, knowing he needed to say it all, confess— _lies_ —before he lost his nerve.

The Master inhaled sharply. The pleasure drained away, the keen edge of terror piercing Stefen’s gut instead.

_pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease—_

He felt a weight on his chest that made it hard to breath, an insistent pressure on his bladder that made him fear he’d shame himself. But shame was nothing, nothing at all to what the Master would do if he was displeased.

Stefen opened his eyes, biting his lip to stifle a whimper, and looked pleadingly into that cold, black gaze.

“Where? How long ago did the ‘horse’ get away?” Angry, the song of his voice became a storm, a raging, discordant cacophony, his words, bludgeoning hail, the silences between, electric.

It would have been better if the Herald had killed him in Rendan’s keep when he killed the others.

Stefen couldn’t hold back a little, despairing moan. “At—at the guardpost. I got the Herald but I couldn’t get the horse, we had to go or I’d’ve lost them both!” he whined. He pleaded.

He held his breath, waiting for judgement.

Slowly, the Master smiled.

Stefen didn’t react; a smile could mean forgiveness or it could mean punishment, he didn’t dare assume.

“Sweet Stef,” the Master murmured, stroking Stefen’s cheek and brushing his thumb across his lips, and at last, Stefen exhaled, falling forward into his Master’s arms, clutching at his clothes and panting for breath. “Shhh, I know you did your best. And I’m _very_ grateful.”

Stefen fisted his hands, daring to look up and meet his Master’s eyes again, hating himself for feeling so hopeful.

Hating himself more for how he trembled when Master Dark leaned forward and kissed him. He felt it in every part of his body, a sudden fire raging to life. This was so much worse than Rendan and his men. Master Dark made him want it, need it. His body shook with the desire to serve him.

Of their own accord his hands slid down the Master’s chest towards his breeches.

To his sorrow—and immense relief—the Master caught his hands and gently pushed them away, chuckling as he extricated himself from the kiss.

“Now, Stef. I must see to our guest,” he murmured indulgently, and Stefen felt his gorge rise at—everything, every part of the play Master Dark forced him to perform every time he was in his presence. The besotted fool, the desperate lover, the cossetted pet, he was none of those things, godsdammit, but he would act as if he was, no less a puppet than the Master’s mindless guards.

He couldn’t make himself pull away. That was for the Master only, and only when he wished it. Stefen leaned against his body like a dog, desperate not to be left. “Do you have to? Right away?” he asked, feeling guilty for the Herald’s sake that he didn’t mean it at all. _Gods, just go, please, anywhere else. Just leave me alone._

The Master gripped his chin and kissed him again, deep, hard, and Stefen fell into it, devoured and lost and only returning to himself when the Master not only released him but stepped back, a little smile on his face.

“I’m afraid so,” he said, and Stefen couldn’t make sense of the answer or the question it was answering through the haze still clouding his mind. “But I haven’t forgotten what a good job you did, bringing him to me. And I haven’t forgotten your reward.”

His focus sharpened instantly at that word. These days there was only one thing that meant and it was the only thing Stefen needed more than he needed his Master.

Master Dark laughed again. “Yes, for my good boy—” He pulled a flask from somewhere, possibly from another room and space entirely, he did enjoy showing off, but Stefen wasn’t an appreciative audience at the moment, his gaze and attention solely on the large glass flask. The Master shook it slightly from side to side, the liquid inside sloshing audibly. Gods, it was full! “What do you say?”

“Please? Please, Master—”

“Of course,” the Master drawled, holding it out.

Stefen reached for the bottle, hesitantly, desperate, but used to having things offered and then snatched away as he reached for them. It wouldn’t have been an effective trick if his Master didn’t occasionally throw him a bone, and this time, mercifully, he allowed Stefen to take the flask and cradle it to his chest.

“Thank you Master, thank you! Thank you so much!” he babbled, but Master Dark, bored, was already walking away.

He cursed the little ball of pain that kindled in his chest at being left alone and as soon as the Master closed the door he fell to his knees, the precious flask still cradled carefully in his arms while he leaned forward, pressing his head to the cold floor, and cried.

* * *

He was fourteen or so, maybe fifteen, nobody knew for sure, least of all him. He’d been with Rendan for going on five years, bought for a handful of silver and a small keg of sour beer from a pair of filthy old men who’d bought him from Berte and carted him north, the length of the kingdom he hadn’t known he was part of. He’d learned what he was good for long before reaching Rendan and it wasn’t singing. It was almost enough to make him think the gods cared enough about a pair of dirty street rats to get him back for what he’d said to Janne that day in the alley.

Whatever his age, after five years Rendan and his men were losing interest in him. He was still small, but not so fresh faced anymore, and although that life had left him with a diseased soul, broken and decaying inside his head, physically he was a hearty thing, and there was only so much you could go through before even horror and hell became somewhat mundane. They still had their fun from time to time, but he didn’t squeal the way he used to and there were days he found it more dull than terrifying. He was mostly just tired.

And then one day, they brought back the girl.

She was pretty, even with the bruises darkening half her face, and her screaming and sobbing made it clear she didn’t find Rendan and his men to be dull at all. They’d brought back plenty of other of their prizes since Stefen had been with them, but she was different, maybe just because they hadn’t touched her before they got her to the hall.

It was the first time Stefen saw Rendan and Tan and them with someone who wasn’t broken yet. The terror in her face reminded him of something and it took him longer than it should have to realize it was himself, sleeping in garbage in the back of that rattling cart, the first time one of the old men had slipped back there with him. Old and foul smelling, but big and so strong—

When they stripped her he realized she wasn’t as young as he’d taken her for. She was a woman, not a girl; her hips and breasts, though slim and small, were too sweetly curved for a child’s body. That didn’t make it any easier.

_Stupid girl, if she’d just stop whining and lie there they’d finish faster,_ he remembered thinking to himself, curled into the corner by the fire, hiding his face and trying to cover his ears, humming a wordless melody to himself and hating her almost more than he hated Rendan for reminding him what it was like for a real person to suffer Rendan and his men.

Turned out he was wrong though. No matter what she did it wouldn’t have changed Rendan’s plan.

“Enjoying yourself, girly?” The bandit lord sneered, _that_ pitch piercing Stefen’s song and making his breath catch. _No, there’s no reason to worry, it’s not you he’s talking to. It’s not you,_ he tried to tell himself but he couldn’t find any comfort in that this time, her answering whimpers were so pained and pathetic. _Idiot, just shut up!_

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, folded in on himself, as small a shape as he could twist himself into, as small a target as he knew how to be.

The sharp crack of a blow landing on soft flesh was met with another shrieking cry. “Gotta send word to your da, thanking him for sending you to us, eh?” Rendan said, his voice low and his words eliciting a round of mean chuckles from his men.

“My father didn’t—”

A slap, or worse, and silence in response this time. “Did, though. He knew what would happen if he didn’t fall in. He made his choice—and yours. The better for us. Oh,” he crooned—Stefen hated that, hated when his voice went soft like that, in mocking mercy—“Don’t hide your face now, girl. You don’t have anything left to hide from us, does she boys?”

There was another round. He wouldn’t look and he tried not to hear, but there was no mistaking that rhythm, flesh on flesh, or the little cries, or the smells. He hummed. Hummed and hummed, smart enough to keep it all inside his head though, he’d made that mistake before, and the men hadn’t been in nearly as dark a mood then.

It was starting to sink in this wasn’t a ‘normal’ game for them, this was something else.

She lasted three days. Three hellish, haunting days, before he overheard Rendan talking to Tan. “Send word to come get her. He’ll want to deliver her himself, I reckon. See the look on the old man’s face,” he spat and laughed. “Old fool.” He inhaled sharply, sniffing. “And for the gods’ sakes, get her out of here. He can pick her up from the barn, smells like she’s a week dead already.”

She wouldn’t smell so bad if they hadn’t—but he didn’t want to think about it. He’d thought he’d seen them at their worst, he hadn’t imagined there was worse in them, or in anyone, but he knew better now and it made him sick. He could hardly admit it even to himself but it was a relief when Tan tossed the girl over his shoulder and disappeared outside. He didn’t know how she wasn’t already dead, but he was glad she was gone, even if it was only as far as the stables.

And yet—

He couldn’t stop thinking about her, while he filled and refilled beers and stirred and dished out week-old stew. How pretty she’d been when they’d brought her. How everything had frightened her. Soft, is what she’d been. It was too dangerous a world to be so soft. The fault of her ‘da,’ for letting her be so soft and not giving Rendan and his set whatever they wanted if he’d wanted to keep her that way. He hated Berte, of course he did, but at least she’d taught him to be strong before she sold him north.

He slipped out of the hall, mumbling something about taking care of the horses when Gart stopped him at the door.

He found her in a stall at the back, and he couldn’t have said what he expected to find when he pulled the blanket off her, except penance, having to see her again. But he was surprised—and endlessly disturbed—to find she was still breathing, shallow and thready. She wouldn’t be for much longer, that was an easy bet, but gods, that she was even still alive.

He couldn’t stand to touch her, could hardly bear to look at her, she was so ruined, more meat than person. But he couldn’t just go back into the hall and leave her, either. She deserved more than that, even if she’d been stupid and soft. He squatted on his heels, scratching his arm, torn between grim vigil and guilty flight.

Then he began to sing. He couldn’t imagine she was in much pain anymore, she was probably already too far gone, but he sang as if he could still help her, since it was all he had. He felt a little rusty, no one to listen to it but himself since he been taken by the slavers, Rendan and his men not seeing much purpose in his ‘caterwauling’ except when they needed a break from their well-deserved injuries.

It was only her and him and the horses now though, and so he sang as if it would make a difference, tears in his eyes, but not for her.

He sang a love song first, a real one, low and sweet and soft, like her, full of longing and hope. He didn’t know many nice songs like that, his list was mostly raunchy ballads, dirty stuff full of innuendo and double entendre, suitable for a brigand’s hall. So he switched to lullabies, he knew a few of those and they seemed fitting.

_Sleep now and don’t fret, your dreams will be lovely and the morning will find you—_

Dead. He blinked and shook his head, his song cut off, the silence hanging heavy around him. Just meat now and no one sang to meat.

He reached for the blanket to re-cover her, shamed by the relief that made his hands shake. He’d go back in and curl up to sleep in his corner and not have think about her anymore.

“What happened to her?” a hushed voice asked from behind him. He fell forward with a yelp, struggling with an ungainly tangle of his own half-grown limbs to not land on the dead girl.

“Whoa! I’m sorry!” The voice came again with a hint of concern. “Let me—”

Stef scrambled away sideways, quick, putting his back to the wall beside the girl so he could face the stranger—there were never strangers in Rendan’s hall, unless they came with Rendan himself. Who was this man, off in the stable alone?

Then—

_An angel_ , Stef thought, catching sight of him and staring, dazzled. He felt a dizzy certainty that he must have been the one who’d quietly slipped away in the stable, fallen asleep and frozen to death while the girl still labored for breath, no less than he’d deserve for such a wooly-headed bit of stupidity.

The man in front of him wasn’t like anyone he’d seen before. Pale, but with hair black as a raven, even with that bit of sheen to it, winged brows over depthless, black eyes, the prettiest face Stef had ever seen on a grown man; he was from a fairy tale if not the Havens.

The stranger dropped his hand—elegant, pale, long-fingered, a noble’s hand, that had never done real work—realizing Stef wasn’t going to accept his help up, and cocked his head and smiled, a little upward twist of one corner of his beautiful mouth. Stef felt it in his belly, like he’d been hooked on a fishing line and the handsome stranger held the rod and reel. This was… this was _desire_ and it was the first time in his life he’d felt it. He hadn’t known he could, but it was glorious and nerve-wracking at once. His skin prickled, his ears rang, he felt lightheaded, and in his breeches—

Looking around, because he couldn’t keep looking at the man any more than he could have stared into the sun, his gaze fell on the body beside him and he remembered the stranger’s question. He shrugged stupidly and pressed his hands between his back and the wall of the stable. Where was Rendan? Who was this man? He was torn between wanting him to stay and wanting to warn him to _go,_ leave this awful, dirty place while he could.

“Your singing was beautiful. I was sorry you stopped,” the stranger said, his words like music.

Stef didn’t think he could have managed anything sensible if he tried, so he just shrugged again. But he flicked his gaze back, catching the curiosity on the man’s face, and he found himself strangely desperate to please him, especially after he’d called Stef’s warbling ‘beautiful.’ Sometimes he still thought it was, but what did he know? The praise he’d once gotten for it on that faraway street corner seemed like something from a dream of another life, and Rendan and his boys didn’t think much of it, except when they needed him to sing away their pain.

“She wasn’t list’ning no more,” he said plainly.

The man smiled a little wider, leaned a little closer, as if to share a secret. His scent was heady, something herbal, woodsy, and clean.

Stef stared and licked his lips.

“I am,” the handsome man promised.

_Too clever_ , Stef had been called all his life. It was never a compliment. Too clever for his own good. Too clever to take what he ought to just take. Too clever to leave well enough alone. Always looking for an out, always considering his options, even when he didn’t rightly have none.

What was his life with Rendan? He was a slave and fuck-boy, a toy for any man in Rendan’s hall. But he wasn’t half-bad to look at, maybe not as pretty as the stranger but prettier than any of the others in the hall, prettier than any of the men and a good lot of the women Rendan’s boys sometimes showed up with. He straightened his shoulders, hands still pressed to the wall behind him, he knew what his stance offered.

He looked down for a moment. The girl’s feet weren’t quite covered by the blanket and there was something heart-breaking in the vulnerability of those pale, bare toes in the dirt and hay.

Stef wasn’t soft like her though.

“I know more songs. More’n I was singing just now,” he said.

The man grinned. “I’m certain you do. And perhaps I could teach you a few new ones.” He held out his hand again.

This time Stef took it.

* * *

Stefen rolled over with a gasp, pounding his hand against his pillow, tears wetting his cheek and his bedding. When the dreamerie went down wrong it went down _wrong_ , and dragged him with it.

He panted for breath, like he’d been running in his sleep instead of strolling through dark and misty memory. Stupid, stupid little boy, thinking he’d known the worst life could be, taking the devil’s hand and calling him an angel.

If there was justice in this life then he must have lived a helluva last one to have earned this lot. But he didn’t believe in justice or angels. He tumbled from his bed, staggering across the room.

He should have checked the time, maybe asked around to find out what had happened to the Herald, but he went to the flask instead.

There were worse memories he could have had dragged up to replay, as real as if he was living them again. Something after he’d gone with the Master maybe, the first time he’d made him mad, when he’d been unprepared for his ‘angel’ to cast off his wings and show his horns. Times he’d been beaten, made to crawl, given away like he was a cup to be borrowed, passed around—filled— _gods!_

His hands fumbled the cork off and he took a hit straight, not even diluting it in water or wine.

He’d told the Master everything about himself in the first, full bloom of that infatuation, thinking, unaccountably, that his plans had more than paid off; that he’d found a safe place at the frozen top of the world. When they’d fucked it had been the first time Stefen had ever actually wanted to. Damn him, how he’d paid for it.

He shuddered, wiping his hand across his lips to catch what spilled in his haste and then sucking his palm to savor any lingering drop, any smear of the drug, as he lurched back to collapse on the bed and curled around his pillow, still instinctively trying to make himself small.

His Master had given him music back, fascinated by Stefen’s Gift. He’d given him instruments, tutors and mentors. His words when he’d taken him away had been more than just innuendo: he’d given him access to a repertoire of songs he’d never have dreamed of, and then he’d stolen it all by back by claiming it, and Stefen himself, as his own.

His little pet, and, when he wished, just another weapon in so vast an arsenal it shook Stefen to his bones and stole his nights and his sleep. Then he’d given him dreamerie, knowing what it had been to his childhood, knowing the racking shame he’d kindled as he used it to buy what little was left of Stefen’s soul.

He hissed in pain, begging the dreamerie to kick in again, but better this time. Please, gods, please, let it be better this time!

The world started to fold in on itself, the little room falling away. Stefen breathed in relief as a cool, green light enveloped him. This was a good place, the best of places. A circle of trees, a warm, sweet-scented wind through them, and someone he was waiting for…


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Van meets Leareth

Vanyel didn’t think he could ever have anticipated a lover as eagerly, at least, not since Lendel. Yfandes would have had something to say about that, but he didn’t think she could have argued it.

He was so close. Leareth, the monster of his nightmares, the murderer of countless innocents, including many of his friends, including his beloved aunt, was a mere few breaths away.

He wasn’t worried about parting with the bard, though he did feel guilty. The boy hadn’t wanted to come, the bandits’ stolen memories gave him some hints of why, if his own imagination hadn’t been up to the task. But this was more important than both of their lives. A part of him hated that he could make that decision, weigh one life—two if he counted his own, though he hardly did—against so many more, but that’s what it was to carry the responsibility for all those lives. Valdemar was his and he would defend it, against Karse, against Hardorn, against Leareth, against anything.

And in his heart a grim battle march was already playing.

He didn’t need magic to know there was something deeply wrong with the soldiers who’d intercepted them, though without it he couldn’t guess exactly what had been done to them. Drugged, if they were lucky, worse, if ‘Master Dark’ was as dangerous as everything he’d seen indicated.

Even Van’s non-magical senses were altered by as much of that cursed powder as he’d dared to let affect him and it made the palace they walked through seemed to shift and waver, his sense of color and light confused, his sense of space twisted. Some halls seemed to shrink as they walked down them, some to stretch up to the sky and vanish into some far point of darkness.

He worried he’d left too much of the interfering magic in the powder, or hadn’t strengthened his own shields sufficiently, but it was too late for those concerns now and there hadn’t exactly been much time to fine tune his and ‘Fandes’ alterations.

The guards were silent at least, which was a relief, because their voices and the Bard’s had seemed to swirl around the inside of his skull in a way that left him dizzy and more than a little nauseous.

And then a door was being opened in front of him and he was led inside to wait.

* * *

The guards hadn’t spoken even when they’d left him, and he didn’t know what he was waiting for or how long it would be.

It felt anticlimactic after all these years, all that had passed, all the distance he’d come, that he was left now to wait. Was it terribly self-involved of him to feel slighted? He hadn’t come all this way to stare at the scenery and wonder if the spiraling intricacy of the carpet pattern was real or the product of his addled senses.

He stood where he’d been left, though there were chairs around him, and ran through Tayledras meditations, simple ones he’d learned in his first stay with the Hawkbrothers, when he’d been little more than a frightened child, grieving and in pain and being crushed under the weight of his own power and the sudden, unwelcome responsibilities that came with it.

There was nothing in the life he’d lived that he would have chosen then, as a spoiled fifteen-year-old too vain and shallow for his own good, but there weren’t many things about it he’d have changed now, looking back, except for the people he’d lost along the way.

And then a man entered the room.

Van had been left with his back to the door and he hadn’t turned so he couldn’t see who had come in at first. Leareth? Another guard? Someone else?

But he knew that voice when he heard it, even through his drugged haze, and it sent a shiver down his spine that he hoped wasn’t visible.

“Vanyel Ashkevron!” Leareth breathed, his words soft and musical and painfully familiar. His dreams of Lendel, his memories of the Hawkbrothers and their Vale, it was as though it was Krebain’s voice echoing back through the years. But if it was, then this was the moment _that_ had been the poor echo of, and Leareth, the Tayledras word for darkness, was the source of the long shadows, waking and dreaming, that had streaked across his life. “At last we meet.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he felt a touch in his hair, soft as a breeze. Or a breath. A nightmare stood behind him, hovering, before stepping around to examine him face to face.

Van had seen from the brigand’s memories that Leareth would be wearing his own likeness, or something he was going to find disturbingly similar, but with everything else so strange and distanced in his current state, he still couldn’t shake the feeling he was only looking into a moving mirror. Or maybe not a mirror, not a normal one: a looking glass from a tale, that showed those who risked looking into it what they might have become if they had taken a different path.

His hair was unrelieved black, as Van’s would never be again, bleached as his was by years of working with node magic. This other face was smoother, more youthful, magic made it so, Van was certain, but in this might-have-been mirroring it could have been because of a life lived easier, with fewer responsibilities, fewer burdens, and fewer losses. The eyes were no mirror though, and it wasn’t just because they were so dark, so black, and watching him with such fascination.

He met that gaze, doing his best to keep his as lost and clouded as he needed Leareth to believe he was.

“Beautiful. They truly are silver!” the other man mused, referring, Van knew, to his eyes. His skin crawled as the dark mage reached out and stroked his cheek, carefully, as though half-afraid Van was an illusion that would vanish at the touch. He could smell blood on the mage’s hand, but the way he was feeling he couldn’t be sure of the smell, even as it seemed to circle around them and permeate the air.

There were clean forms of blood magic but that’s not what surrounded him now. This was magic forged in suffering, that reveled in the destruction it wrought. And the mage that wielded it touched Vanyel with a trembling hand and a raw, breathless wonder written across his familiar face.

“I have waited so long for you to join me,” the mage said, leaning forward, and it took everything in Van not to recoil. When he’d been that spoiled child that the Tayledras had taken in and nursed back to health he’d been tempted by Krebain’s beautiful face and flattering words. He’d only just realized in time that they were merely the dressing for a terrible evil, but he was older now, and stronger in what he was, and there was nothing tempting in the monster that leaned forward and brushed soft lips across his own. Even the memory of the Bard’s kiss was sweeter than this.

He remained unresponsive, his hands bound before him, neither leaning into nor away from the gesture.

The mage pulled away with only the briefest flash of what Van would have called regret, if he’d been more certain of his senses, before his expression settled into ominous satisfaction.

“Well.” With no other warning he struck Vanyel, a sudden hard, open-handed slap across the face.

He let the momentum of the blow turn his head, but didn’t flinch when the mage cupped his jaw and faced him forward again, gaze still scouring his captive’s blank expression. “Perhaps this will be even better.”

He felt the touch of the other man’s mind, prodding at the barriers on his, the groping exploration of something oily, something decayed, something unexpectedly aged.

Magic could buy you years, especially if you didn’t mind passing the consequences of its use onto others, draining them instead of yourself but…how many? How could this man who looked at least ten years Vanyel’s junior feel so ancient in his head?

The assault subsided, the dark mage seeming satisfied. He picked up the rope leash that bound Vanyel’s hands and turned it in his own, curiously. He arched a brow and wrapped the rope around his fist. “Come with me,” he said.

* * *

Van followed the mage through the room into another, a bedroom. His stomach churned, but he’d known the possibilities. The mage led him to the bed and gave him a thorough once over, sneering and tsking, but not bothering to speak again for an audience he—hopefully—didn’t think could appreciate it.

After a long moment he turned and left the room, leaving Vanyel, again, alone.

He made good use of the time. He hadn’t been entirely honest with the bard—who, even if Van had completely trusted him, couldn’t be forced to tell what he didn’t know. Those cracks in the inner barriers around his power could be pierced without breaking them, the better to conduct reconnaissance in his enemy’s stronghold, inside the shields.

 It was a good thing he was alone because the first contact with his Othersense, scrambled as it was, made him stagger, his knees nearly giving out at the wave of magic that assailed him. He had that impression of the overwhelming scent of blood again, like he was in a butchery or a battlefield. The air was poisonous and wrong and he panted and grabbed his head, pressing with his hands against the non-physical pain that speared it.

Gate magic, distant enough it didn’t quite bring him down, probably being used to bring in more troops or mage beasts, as though Leareth’s army hadn’t been impressive enough. He would have liked to hide behind the powerful shields that were muddling his senses but he couldn’t waste this opportunity. He forced himself to straighten and resume his indifferent posture in case someone came back, and he spread his awareness out, cautiously.

There was a trio of powerful nodes, but he’d known that since before they’d crossed the ice wall mountains. The air was redolent with magic, traceries of power strung in a web that echoed the one in Valdemar, but here, all threads led directly to Leareth. He could find him easily just by following any of a dozen streams of power—from other mages, he realized, following back along first one and then another line. Mages who were feeding power directly into their master’s reserves. The sheer amount of power being exchanged was humbling and horrifying.

Leareth wouldn’t be easily overcome. The only hope Vanyel saw was in the tight-fisted grip the dark mage seemed to have on the power he commanded. There was no functioning mind within the castle shields who was even a close second to Leareth’s level, except Van himself. And many of the minds, especially here, closest to the mage, were blank and empty, wiped of will and personality. Puppets didn’t frighten Van nearly as much as free-minded followers; strings could always be cut. There were other captives, not mind-wiped but imprisoned and used, their hopeless minds fluttering at the restraint of mage-born bonds as though desperation could free them.

Obviously it couldn’t, but perhaps Vanyel could, and earn, if not allies, at least more dangerous and unpredictable obstacles to the dark mage’s ambitions.

He didn’t dare let his attention linger, any more than he could delve too deeply into anything he saw, lest he give himself away.

And anyway, someone was coming to join him in the room.

He withdrew that slim, tenuous finger of Othersense back into the shield of the barrier magic.

He’d known it wasn’t Leareth, had even been able to tell that it was one of the empty-minded ones, but it wasn’t until the door opened that he saw that it was a girl, just a young thing, he’d have thought her a maid but the blank, empty look in her eyes made mock of that.

A puppet of a flesh and bone, less mind left than a cord of wood that at least might have still had the redolent life-glow of the tree it had been cut from. Worse than death, and a bitter mockery life. There would be no coming back from what had been done to her.

She didn’t speak, her eyes, like cold glass, looked without seeming to see. He almost started when she deftly untied the Bard’s shaky knots on his bonds and those little fingers started undoing the fastenings of his inherited coat but there was nothing lascivious in the way she set to disrobing him. There was nothing at all, except whatever impulse had been set into her unconscious body by her master.

She stripped him efficiently and he contained his shudder but not the gooseflesh that broke out across his skin when she left him naked in Leareth’s bedroom, carrying off the bandit’s rags he’d been wearing.

Behind the shields the interfering magic was at play with his senses again. The shadows around him darkened, deepened, took on forms monstrous and chilling. A demon, an elemental, the face of a man he’d killed on the Karsite border, the face of child he’d failed to save.

The girl returned, bearing new clothes for him though she laid them on the bed and disappeared again. Worse came when she returned with a bowl of steaming, perfumed water and a rag and began washing him.

It was unnatural, sickening, the impersonal, unaware touch. His efforts to distance himself only played into the dark magic that surrounded him. If he tried not to focus on the girl—the girl’s body, may as well be the girl’s _corpse_ —his mind only seemed to take him back to other scenes almost as uncomfortable, if still profoundly less tragic: maids his mother had sent to him when he was still a boy to try to turn him from a nature he wasn’t even aware of yet, the prostitute he’d been “given” for his fourteenth birthday for the same purpose, innocents, and those who were less so, boy and girl, sent to try to seduce him through the years, in efforts to influence or outright buy the powerful man he’d become.

_Gods!_

His stomach roiled, he thought he shook. He forced himself away from the bad memories and regretted it.

His thoughts were a haze and the room seemed darker, but he pulled himself from those cold mental paths to find the girl—the corpse, that was the only mercy, he could comfort himself that she was most definitely _not_ there suffering this with him—was on her knees and had his cock half down her throat.

He yelped, he thought he yelped, then instinct deeper ingrained than the animal impulses of the flesh that had unwillingly responding to the vacant-minded girl’s expert efforts, warned him to be still, to remember his situation and pray that no one had been close enough to hear him. Panic and disgust chilled his body’s involuntary reaction and he softened in her mouth despite her skill.

He didn’t understand how anyone, even the darkest soul, could find genuine pleasure in this empty-eyed, soulless facsimile of passion.

Long practice at pretending calm before enemies and allies alike helped keep him standing, knees locked, his breathing even, his chin high, the better not to look, but inside his head he was screaming. He preferred men but he’d been with women, and this wasn’t that, even if he couldn’t help responding again—

There was a sound when she finally pulled away, releasing him, but he couldn’t have said what it was or where it came from, her, or him, an unknown observer, or even whether it was anything more than another trick of his drugged senses.

As if nothing had happened the girl pushed the bowl of cooling water away from her across the floor and started dressing him.

He did his best to calm himself. There were worse things. He hadn’t been prepared for that, but there were certainly worse things.

She dressed him in soft leather and silk, all of unrelieved black. It was an outfit he’d have happily picked out for himself in his vainglorious youth but now he could only think how he’d look even more like Leareth’s twin, or more probably, elderly father. As though to underscore the point, his knees, ankles, and hips were starting to ache from holding stiffly to that position for so long.

When he was clothed she stood and produced a silver comb, using it to quickly, efficiently brush out his hair. He didn’t need his Othersense to feel the foreboding. He hadn’t been dressed up to be sat in a corner and ignored.

The girl turned back to the bed and though he’d thought she was done she returned and started fastening a belt around his hips, the weight and slap against his thigh as she buckled it told him it bore a sheathed sword.

He doubted himself for a moment. Surely it was a delusion of the drug, a memory dragged up in dread, but he’d been armed since he was a boy, he knew the weight of a sword at his hip. A heavy sword. Not his choice if he’d been given one.

“Follow,” she said, her voice sweet but painfully dulled. Air forced through vocal chords, shaped by tongue and teeth and lips, but the speaker had no control or interest in the sound.

He didn’t have to pretend at an almost inanimate stiffness, didn’t have to try to mimic her as he slowly walked the pain from his joints while he followed.

A door and a corner and a dizzy, heady whirl as if they’d walked through some barrier.

Then he and the girl were standing before a table, laid out with the remains of what looked to have been a rich meal, Leareth seated opposite them with two men and a woman.

These others didn’t look to be mind-wiped though he didn’t dare examine them. He had only the brief impression of smirking faces and avid, curious anticipation to make him think so, but since the very masonry around him seemed alive with leering faces he didn’t think he could make any assumptions. They could be actual mannequins of wood and cloth and he wasn’t sure he’d recognize them as such.

He began to worry again that he’d left too much of the magic effect in the powder or that he hadn’t shielded himself well enough. It shouldn’t have been getting stronger but somehow it felt like it was.

“The guest of honor!” Leareth announced in ringing tones that Van would swear he could _see_ —each word a swirling puff of poisonous, colored vapor that wafted towards him over picked clean bones and congealing liquids. His alternate self, his broken-mirror reflection, definitely smirked. “— _and,_ the entertainment.”

A woman laughed.

The girl curtsied too low, as if the muscles holding her upright had abruptly gone limp, and quietly abandoned him.

“Captain, if you will.” More poison-cloud words drifting towards him, circling him. They bore they sickly scent of rot, vegetable and flesh, distinct and equally cloying.

The ground beneath him bucked, his head spun, for a moment he imagined they were on a ship crossing stormy water. For a moment he could smell the salt-sea air.

Dammit, he needed to keep his head, somehow. Ground and center, even if he couldn’t properly sense the ground. It was a deadly fine line between feigning weakness and giving into it. He let his eyelids fall slowly, hoping it passed for a lazy, drugged blink. It helped a little, one less confused sense clamoring for his attention, and he felt slightly clearer headed.

“Fight for us, Herald. Show us the prowess of Valdemar’s champion.”

That was as much warning as he was given. His eyes were still closed when a blow—the flat of a blade laid hard against his back—sent him stumbling falteringly forward. His stomach caught the edge of the table, his hands made a slow, graceless scramble for purchase across a landscape of half cleared plates and bowls that clinked and clattered, smearing him with the refuse of a rich meal that left him thinking, oddly, of home, his father’s keep, and many an uncomfortable family banquet in his childhood.

He felt he was blinking away memories, blinking through a haze of years, mocking laughter in his ears as he straightened and absently wiped at a smear of gravy on his cheek and a dollop of something mostly liquid dripping down his nose.

“Not much of a ‘champion,’” someone sneered.

Another blow came, and even with his eyes open he was unprepared. This time, snaking from in front of him, it smacked his ribs and upper belly and sent him sprawling back on his ass to a renewed round of laughter.

The boneless fall had the back of his head crack on the ground and he swore he heard a crescendo of glass shattering, a smell of burning bread or wheat. In his dulled, confused state he found a certain amount of relief that even pain was apparently too straight-forward of a sensation to survive the powder’s muffling influence, though he knew from experience how dangerous numbness and insensibility could be.

“He’s in no state—”

“Proceed, Captain.”

A shadow loomed over him, tall, broad. Knocked flat on his ass at the foot of a table at a banquet, the mountain standing over him could be one of his many cousins, sturdy, bullish even in their youth, much more so than Lord Withen Ashkevron’s eldest son and heir ever would be.

But the bogie of his young nightmares, the only one who’d have dared come after him with a real weapon in hand—the figure reached out and prodded him ungently with the flat of that blade again, impatiently. He could hear the sour old man grousing at him to get up and face his weapon’s work _like a man._ So many times he’d heard that exact phrase through the years without understanding the true implication, so many times he’d thought it of himself as he’d grown older, understanding, and hating, but never entirely able to exorcise that sneering, bitter invective.

_Jervis._

The weaponmaster raised his sword warningly and Van managed to roll his body to one side and push himself up to his knees before the exaggeratedly slow motion brought the sword down—blade first—where he’d been lying. It had been a false mercy though. He hadn’t regained his feet before that blade flicked out and knocked his shaking legs from under him again.

 Someone sighed. His father? Withen had always been so disappointed in his eldest son, the only of the boys to favor their delicate mother rather than their big, rough father.

He tried to shake his head but it only made the room spin faster. He wasn’t a child. He wasn’t a green boy who’d only trained against brute force and only been trained for it, as unsuited as it was for his slight frame—

“Defend yourself!” someone said coldly, a voice from his past. It made his left arm ache in remembered pain at a break decades healed and worse, set a bowel-loosening terror coursing through him.

It was that that saved him, his body reacting when his mind was too lost to make sense of the sharp edge of a sword aimed at his soft parts. He ducked and dodged and managed to get to his feet a small distance from his armed tormentor.

He shook his head, feeling like he’d taken a blow to it, but he couldn’t make the world make sense.

“Your sword, fool.”

He fumbled at the belt the girl had fastened around his waist. His fingers worked clumsily at the catch and wrapped around the hilt of the short, heavy weapon. It wasn’t one he’d ever have chosen for himself but it was exactly the sort of thing that they used to shove into his hand to train in the barracks with his brothers, cousins, and the fosterlings.

But he _wasn’t_ that green boy, he thought again; for all his childhood dreams of becoming a bard he’d spent far more of his adult life on weapons work than on music, and the unwieldy, unbalanced sword that would once have weighed heavy in his soft-skinned hands fit into his grip like it had been made to be an extension of his arm. No, not his preferred weapon, but he’d eventually learned to appreciate any weapon enough to broaden his preferences.

When the next strike came he was ready, trusting to his body, muscle and bone and decades of practice. He deflected and danced aside, suddenly, briefly nimble on his feet as he was not in his mind. The enemy’s sword snaked out again but again he was ready, beating his opponent to it with a blow that would have sent a lesser man’s weapon flying from a stinging, numbing hand.

He blinked, the high of battle partially clearing his vision for a moment. He had the impression of a tall man, muscular but lean, with some sort of cloth wrapped around his face. There was something familiar about him but before he could ponder that, Leareth spoke again, smoke-edged words floating between the combatants and wreathing Van’s head, darkening his vision, clouding his senses, peeling back the years.

“Continue.”

Unimpressed. Even when he’d worked with Lissa and his books, put honest and concerted effort into his own training, into trying to find a method that would work for him better than the hack-and-slash-and-beat-down style that was the only thing in the arsenal of the old weaponmaster, it had never been enough. Not for Jervis and not for Withen.

He could hear the way the old man had bellowed as he’d gone after him that last time that broke his arm. He braced for that pain, for the death of his young dream of making a life through nimble fingers dancing over delicate strings. But even while his soul sank, even while fear rose to overtake him, his arm snapped out, sword extended. The one advantage of such a heavy weapon was that it might take a blow as the lighter blades he’d have preferred could not, which was useful when he had no shield and little room to maneuver.

The contact, blade on blade, was jarring, and sent reverberations through his arm and shoulder and made him wince. The quality of the blade hadn’t made it seem out of the question that it would shatter at such rough, unintended purpose, but fortunately for himself and his opponent, it didn’t. Unfortunately for him, his opponent had skill and wit enough to avoid Vanyel’s twisting motion to disarm and the other man leapt back quickly, out of range of a sharp, forward jab from the short weapon.

“Coward,” the man muttered. Or Van thought he muttered. Or remembered hearing the weaponmaster sneer at Vanyel’s untutored efforts to avoid head-on engagement with a larger, stronger opponent.

He came at him again, Jervis’ enraged rush, all fury and power and roaring like a gust of wind, bellowing like thunder. Van pretended to fall back. Pretended to stumble as he sidestepped. Pretended to fumble and let his weapon and his guard down. Once it would have been no pretense and he’d have ended up flat on his arse with a broken shield and a broken arm—and where was his shield? He could have made good use of it now.

Jervis never had expected much of him, and he didn’t seem to expect this. He swept out his sword, gloating, going for the kill as he wouldn’t have done if anyone had thought Vanyel’s life mattered a wit to his lord father, son or heir or not. Too far though, the weaponmaster always extended too far when he went to beat down a student, brute that he was.

But Van was quick. And Van _had_ been pretending. He spun suddenly inside the larger man’s reach, too close and too fast this time for Jervis’ hasty attempt to withdraw and Van’s arm knew the motion, his shoulders knew the follow through, and without any plan to do it he thrust his sword up hard, up, under the ribs, sliding through padded leather armor and skin and flesh, straight into the heart. For a moment he froze.

There was a choking sound above him, and a brief, whispery gasp. 

Instinctively he pulled his weapon free with a jerk before the dead man could take it from him as he fell.

There was—applause?

He made a sound from deep inside his own chest, down from the diaphragm, a panicked, wordless cry, as he went to his knees, tossing his bloody sword.

Not Jervis. No, he couldn’t have—not Jervis, who’d made peace with him in his father’s hold. Who’d come to him for lessons in how to better train the young ones like he’d been, scrawny and small and less suited to heavy weapon work than a fish to a paddock. Jervis, who’d been the first one in his home keep to tell him he was fine the way he was, to say he had no quarrel and plenty of respect for the men and women he’d known who were shield-mates. Jervis, who’d married Melena, the mother of his nephew, who’d—gods, no, not Jervis.

His vision swam. Iron-gray hair swirled into gold and then back and forth, quick enough to make any alchemist envious. The body was big and stocky, no, big but lean, broad shoulders and tapering torso, no, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, thick through the stomach, no—

He reached for the cloth wrapped around the other man’s face, his hands shaking so badly it made him feel seasick to look at them. He missed the first time, fingers scrabbling numbly through the rushes that lined the floor beside the dead man’s face, but he finally managed to get them curled instead at the edge of the cloth and pull it down.

For a moment, a heartbreaking, horrified moment—but no, _not Jervis_. A younger, taller, much slimmer man. Familiar, distantly, but not known to him.

He sobbed and half collapsed, still moaning, hovering on his hands and knees over the man he’d killed. Feeling guiltier at the relief he felt that it was a stranger, than that he’d killed a man he hadn’t even known. Leareth. This was—

A hand caught in his hair and jerked his head back, pulling hard enough to make his scalp burn and force him back onto only his knees. He blinked. There was a purple haze to the air that he didn’t think was only due to his addled vision. Leareth was behind him. He felt him crouch, the movement transferring through his grip on Van’s hair, every tiny shift pulling and twisting the knots tighter.

Leareth kissed his neck, like a lover. Again, just under his ear. Again, on his ear itself.

“You are a beautiful killer. I could watch you slaughter a hundred men. A thousand—and I’d sip their blood from your hands. But you are a fool,” the dark mage whispered, stroking the other side of his neck. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about the trick you tried to play? Did you really think that you could trust your secrets to a drug-addled Bard? That my own little pet wouldn’t out you to me?”


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to Stefen. Shit gets real

Stefen woke with a gasp that was nearly a scream. Drenched with sweat, his hair plastered to his face, shaking. The room smelled of dreamerie, but that was an illusion, or perhaps just a lingering of the dream. He didn’t burn it like old Berte had; that wasn’t strong enough, that wasn’t close enough to killing him as the liquid stuff was. 

He panted. These days the dreams never seemed to come as nice as they had in the beginning but that didn’t stop him chasing them, stupidly, in hopes he could find his way to one of the good ones again, and maybe stay there this time. And at least when all they brought him was oblivion that was still better than this, than wakefulness.

He could tell by the way his skin itched that his master was there. He often was, in the dark, in person or just watching in one of the countless, invisible ways he had. He was _here_ tonight though. Stefen didn’t know how he knew, he just did. For a moment his stomach heaved in revulsion, just once, before the sick, shameful longing overtook him, choking his free will like a weed strangling a seedling.

“Master?” he whispered, with soul-shriveling hopefulness.

His answering chuckle sent shivers down Stefen’s spine.

“Stef, my sweet boy. Come to me.”

Stefen’s heart leapt. He would always answer that call, no matter how he hated him. He couldn’t help himself.

He threw himself from his bed and stumbled through the darkness towards his master’s chair. It was the only chair in the room and Stefen never sat in it unless he was forced to. He dropped to his knees and crawled the last step, coming to Dark’s feet, feeling his way timidly up his master’s lower legs so he could press against his lap like a frightened child, each painful breath making his whole chest shudder as a part of him, still, after all these years, struggled against the inescapable.

But those hands, those exquisite, elegant hands, so adept at tearing him apart, closed around his shoulders, squeezed, and pulled him up onto his master’s lap to curl against his master’s body, and Stefen settled there with a sigh of despondent bliss.

“Are you enjoying your reward, my sweet Stef?” Dark asked, arms around him, playfully tangling his fingers in Stefen’s hair and tugging lightly.

“Yes, thank you master,” he said, hoarse, trying to hide his face against his master’s chest. Dark wore a soft shirt with a deep, open vee that let Stefen nuzzle against his skin and the warmth and scent of him soothed Stefen more than the dreamerie did.

“I have a special surprise for you, Stef. Will you come with me?”

“Of course, master!” A coiling tendril of terror curled through him, but he didn’t hesitate with his scripted answer.

He stood up, immediately chilled by the distance from his Master, and he took the hand Dark offered to him and scampered after him.

He knew they looked like lovers, himself so eagerly following in his Master’s wake, guided by that hand. He wondered if anyone watching would have noticed that he was always carefully one pace behind, or that sometimes behind Dark’s back Stefen’s mouth would tighten for a moment with an inner struggle he didn’t dare express.

It was worse as they approached _that_ room. Part of Stefen’s first suite of rooms when he’d come; the one attached to the Master’s. Now Stefen only visited it when he was in trouble or when Dark was feeling particularly perverse. In spite of the iron control that kept him docile and desperate for Dark’s touch he broke out in a sweat and started shaking again.

His master noticed immediately. He’d probably been waiting for it. He turned to smile at his slave even as he reached for the door. He tsked. “Oh, Stef, I’m afraid I’ve given your room away for the night. We have visitors and it only seemed fair. Surprise!”

_The Herald_. Stefen was sure, and his heart sank, gorge rising in his throat. He didn’t know why. Better the Herald than him in there. Better anyone else than him in there. But he didn’t want it to be… he didn’t want to have to _see_ , and yet he felt he somehow owed the man that much, to not turn away from what he’d delivered him to. Gods, idiot Herald, why hadn’t he run when he’d had the chance—

He froze and for a moment his head seemed to clear to a terrible, crystal focus.

It wasn’t the Herald.

“Da—Damen?”

“Ah, yes, I think that was the name. Squirrelly little thing, wasn’t he?”

Stefen’s legs were stiff, as thought he was walking on stilts like some carnival clown, as he crossed into the dreaded room, to the wall, to Damen.

All the luxurious furniture had been taken out of the room long before, except the bed, which only looked more obscene, surrounded by Dark’s tools of restraint and torture. Above Damen there was a beautiful gittern, the most glorious example of the luthier’s craft, crudely nailed to the wall through the neck and barrel, utterly ruined, like a butterfly pinned to a board, a constant reminder of the day Stefen had traded it back to Dark for more dreamerie.

At least Damen hadn’t been nailed to the wall. Was that a mercy? The boy might have preferred it. He’d been so afraid and Stefen recognized the wounds he did have, naked, chained still by his wrists.

His hands were gentle and careful, even though they shook as he cupped the boy’s cheeks and raised his face. He sobbed and lowered it again instantly.

Damen. He’d thought that keeping him from Rendan and his men as often as he could had been enough, that shielding him from the maddened Herald and sending him off with the Healer might have set him free. He should have known no one escaped Master Dark. He’d said as much to the Herald.

“Where’s the Healer?” he asked, his voice as mechanical as one of Dark’s blank-minded slaves. He’d often wished Dark would just make him one of them, but his master had confided once that that would have killed the damned music that made him such a unique tool.

Dark laughed. “Dear Brodie? He’s here too of course. They came together.”

Stefen finally noticed the pale shape on the table nearest the wall, among Dark’s toys. A head. Just the head: wispy gray hair, bloodless face, gaping mouth. He couldn’t find it in him to care about the Healer he’d met so briefly when Damen was—

“He told me how he broke my barrier magic on the Herald. With _your_ permission. And how you stood up to that madman and saved them. So very brave and noble, my Stef. I’m proud of you.”

Part of him exulted at the words, just the words, but a deeper part of him recognized the menace. Still, for the first time in a very long time, his whole attention wasn’t on his Master, even though he stood near enough that the fine hairs on his skin rose.

He couldn’t step away from Damen, couldn’t shake the feeling that even a step, a single step, would be abandoning him, again. He’d been a sniveling boy, cowardly, weak, terrified by everything. Dim, if sometimes at least as cunning as a small animal that knows enough to flee before a larger one. He’d lingered in Stefen’s shadow every opportunity he had, using him as a shield, hiding behind him, but he’d been so touch-shy he’d never come close enough to even brush him. Stefen understood why but it had still left him feeling diseased. The only times he could remember actually touching the boy had been when the Herald was tearing the keep apart, first to grab him and send him to the storeroom, then to pull him behind him to try to shield him from the Herald’s attention.

He wanted to let him down but he didn’t have the keys to the shackles. That wouldn’t generally have been a problem for a quick-fingered lad like himself, but he didn’t think he could keep steady-handed enough not to snap all his picks. He wanted to cover him, give him at least that dignity, but he didn’t dare while Master Dark was watching. He couldn’t even give the boy that.

“But it was a naughty trick you and the Herald tried to pull on me, Stef. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

His voice was soft, reproachful. He almost sounded hurt. Stefen would have laughed if he could but mostly he just wished Dark would shut up and go away.

“You disobeyed me. You brought an armed enemy into our home. He’s a dangerous man, you should know that; you saw what he’s capable of.”

He sounded so reasonable. He always did, even when spouting the purest asinine madness. Dark touched his shoulder and turned him, pulling him into his arms. Stefen didn’t feel overwhelmed with adoration and longing at his master’s touch. No matter where he looked around the room he saw Damen, even in the darkness behind his own closed eyes. There was no room for his master in his thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and as though the words were the first trickle before a flood he felt his legs give out and a broken litany of _I’m sorry_ s pour out of him as he collapsed. He’d have fallen if Dark hadn’t been holding him and hadn’t continued to support him. He felt a deep, burning shame at accepting that support, at letting the hands that had taken Damen touch him now, but he was helpless to pull away. Those hands caressed him, pretending to offer comfort as they often did, but that was small penance for Stefen’s failure and for once, a poor distraction.

_I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry_ —and not one word was offered to Dark even as they poured ceaselessly from his lips.

“Shhh, hush,” Dark soothed as Stefen finally quieted. He could tell from his voice that Dark was pleased by his slave’s breakdown. He felt only revulsion when Dark kissed his temple. “It’s all right. It’s all right. I forgive you. Of course, I forgive you, my sweet boy.”

As if _he_ wasn’t the one—

“But I’m afraid the Herald’s trail of destruction only widens. He killed that young guard captain you were so fond of. Warin? Yes, that’s it, Warin.” He tsked. “A tragedy. If only you’d been honest with me.”

Stefen choked, he couldn’t seem to stop the tears, but he wasn’t crying for Warin anymore than he was crying for ‘betraying’ Master Dark. The captain had been nice enough in his way but he’d still been Dark’s man, too selfish or too blind to care who he served. A man who’d made his choices.

But Damen—

“The Herald seems to think you’re the one who betrayed him to me, Stef.”

_And why does he think that, you—_

His thoughts were fractured, the tumbling shards of a broken glass, but behind them was a cleansing anger. Warin may have died Master Dark’s man, his dog, but Stefen wouldn’t.

He thought of Damen, pale and still, tears and blood and worse still sticky on his young face—how long, how long since he’d died? If Stefen had come out of his stupor and gone out looking earlier, could he have saved him? Taken his place as he’d done before?—and the tears that burned his own eyes weren’t just of grief.

He’d never felt so free, not in years, and he knew he had the boy to thank. He had to give up his boot-dagger, a real weapon, whenever he was in Dark’s keep. But in Dark’s arms, still pressed to his chest while the man played the doting lover, hands caressing the body he so often abused, Stefen reached for the small dagger at his waist, more tool than weapon, but someone who knew what they were doing and struck unexpectedly could still do damage with it. He would make sure Dark had to kill him—and he would die free and make his apologies to Damen and whoever else, direct.

Dark shuddered theatrically. Nothing about him was sincere. Stefen gritted his teeth, closing his fist around the handle of the little knife. He shuddered too, but it was tension, not artifice or even fear. “And he’s waiting in your room. I can’t _imagine_ what he’ll do to you.”

He said it in a hushed whisper, gossipy, sly, as though he wasn’t the one who’d arranged it. As though he didn’t arrange everything. But still Stefen’s hand relaxed around the hilt of his dagger. He hadn’t been thinking about the Herald, Master Dark’s pale shadow. He wasn’t interested in Dark’s contrived dramas but he’d hated the Herald so much, he’d wanted him so desperately, perhaps there was something there.

His thoughts spun, a whirlwind of plots and plans and schemes, most ridiculous and impossible. _All_ ridiculous and impossible. Dark was cunning, not just cruel, if the Herald was any real threat he’d have killed him long before, not had him brought into his castle, drugged or not.

And yet…and yet…he was also so vain.

Dark caught his hand and pulled it, unresisting, away from the dagger. He pressed a kiss to the center of his palm and Stefen exulted in the way it made his flesh crawl. There was no more unwilling pleasure, no more agonies of desire. How long would it last though? How long did he dare to wait?

“I won’t send you back to him unarmed,” Dark promised silkily.

_You don’t have to send me back to him at all, if you didn’t want to see him turn me inside out._

His thoughts were starting to settle out, the rage still burned but cold logic was seeping back in.

That was the problem of course. The Herald may or may not be a potential ally, a potential tool—and a far better one than the little sticker Dark let him keep on his belt in the castle—but good luck getting the man back on his side after Dark had had time to play with him, and then tell him that it was all Stefen’s fault, if he hadn’t been able to figure that out on his own.

Suicide had long seemed like a good enough out, if he’d just been brave enough for it, but now, with this rage—gods, he wanted to see Dark suffer. He wanted to know he’d cost him _something_.

Dark pressed a small, familiar wax-paper envelope into Stefen’s hand, just where his lips had brushed.

Stefen slowly closed his fingers around it and Dark chuckled and cupped his face, tilting it down to kiss his forehead. “That’s right. You already know how to use it. And it’s a new batch. Stronger. The Herald will be helpless. You can take your revenge for the young captain at your leisure.” He flicked the tip of Stefen’s nose.

Stefen sniffled. “Thank you, Master,” he murmured, throwing his arms around Dark’s neck and hiding his face. He heaved a sigh. Dark rubbed his back.

“Of course, my sweet Stef. I’ll always protect you.”

* * *

They walked back hand-in-hand and even at the last Stefen managed to keep himself from turning for another look at Damen. He did glance at the Healer’s severed head and spare a moment to wonder if he’d betrayed Damen to Dark before being betrayed himself, or had just been another victim of Stefen’s cruel, quixotic master.

It didn’t really matter, he’d paid either way.

* * *

His breath came faster as they approached the door to his current room, as close to a sanctuary as any place inside the castle could be, if only because he kept his dreamerie there when he had it. It was the Herald he anticipated, not Dark. What would happen? What could happen? If he was quick enough, and with the dreamerie burned away and Dark’s thrall over his mind loose, he could be _damned_ quick—but what could he do?

He only just kept from leaping when one of Dark’s mindless servants came up behind them in the hall and cleared its throat. Dark turned with an annoyed look and Stefen kept his expression blankly besotted.

“What is it?” Dark snapped and Stefen instinctively flinched at that tone, but the soldier-servant didn’t react except to answer.

“Your Farseers warn of movement beyond the mountains, lord.”

“Movement? It doesn’t matter; they’re far too late. Go. I’m busy.” The silk and softness had bled away, leaving only poison in his voice.

His servant bowed disjointedly and started to retreat.

“Wait—so close?” Dark snapped, his gaze unfocusing as he turned his attention briefly elsewhere, and the servant stilled at once.

It was an opportunity, but old instinct told Stefen it wasn’t the right one. Haste killed even the clever, and even when they were against far lesser opponents than Dark.

Dark’s nostrils flared and his jaw twitched and Stefen want to run; better to be anywhere but there when the master wore that expression. Someone was going to wish they were dead long before death was granted them—and they’d be lucky if it was granted at all. He lowered his head and shrank away, but he’d have done no different even if he’d still been the infatuated fool.

Dark took a steadying breath and his next words were gentle, almost genial.

“It seems I’ll have to leave you and the Herald to play alone, my Stef.”

Was this a trick? He quickly turned a pleading look on Dark, his body remembering the sniveling servitude even as his head was finally free of the compulsion. Too good to believe Dark might actually leave him alone with the Herald. Was he so sure they’d turn on each other? Or was it a trap?

Dark tutted, clicking his tongue. “You’ve been so brave, facing the Herald before now. Remember your dear Damen—”

A wave of that cleansing fury crested over him and he fought to keep it from his face, from his eyes, dropping his head as though in sorrow. He would have believed his master if he’d told him the Herald was responsible for what had happened to Damen, even a candlemark ago he’d have believed, even after seeing the boy in chains that had often been around his own wrists, even seeing him covered in the familiar marks of Dark’s crueler games.

To his advantage, he hoped, his strangled, bitter cry sounded like a whimper; he tried to disguise his flinch, when Dark touched his shoulders, as trembling.

“Now, now. Be brave!” Dark caught his chin and tilted his face upwards, forcing him to meet his eyes. Was fear enough to mask the lack of adoration? He didn’t think even he could put up that good of an act, not now, with Damen’s name on Dark’s damned lips.

Dark sighed, smirking. “I’ve given you what you need to protect yourself.” He tapped the soft skin under Stefen’s jaw. “Don’t betray me again.”

Stefen immediately lowered his eyes and swallowed against Dark’s finger, the pressure not letting up even as he nodded.

“Good boy,” Dark murmured and left him.

* * *

He expected the room to be dark, but as he eased the door open, afraid of his greeting, he found the fire had been lit in the fireplace, a candle by the bed, and the Herald sat, bow-headed and -shouldered on the side of it.

The man didn’t react to the slow creak of the hinges, though he had to hear them. From across the room Stefen could see the runed cuffs around the Herald’s wrists and relaxed minutely. Dark had more tricks than just the powder to keep mages in line.

He sidled in around the door and closed it behind him. He thought the Herald turned his head, just slightly, but he didn’t raise it, and his silvered hair obscured his face, giving Stefen no clue yet what he was dealing with.

On a whim he went to the fire, pretending to stoke it, mucking in the ashes and staring at the flames. It was dangerous to put his back to the man on the bed but he needed the moment to clear his own thoughts. The Herald was his best bet for sticking it to Dark; he didn’t know how, but he knew that. That didn’t mean he thought he could trust him though. He didn’t know what had already been done to him, and if he’d believed Dark—and why wouldn’t he?—that Stefen had betrayed him, then Stefen might still need Dark’s ‘gift’ just to make it out of the next few moments with his skin intact.

He sheathed his dagger and clutched the waxed-paper packet and stood to face the man on the bed. He wasn’t sure how to begin, wasn’t sure how much he dared to say, when he was half convinced this was some sort of trick and Dark was watching and listening to it all.

“You killed Warin,” he said, surprising himself with the words and with the sullenness of his own voice.

The head turned just a fraction more, just enough that the man could have been looking at Stefen from behind his hair.

He didn’t like this at all; it made him feel sick with nerves. What was going on? What had happened to the Herald? Where was Dark’s trick?

“Why—why did you kill Warin?” Plaintive now. Was he a child? Why the hell was this the best he could find to say, with all his cleverness and all his skill with words?

The figure on the bed said nothing and the silence stretched around him, mocking his stupidity. _Why, why, why_ , like the whys had ever mattered. Why didn’t he have parents? Why did he grow up in a gutter? Why was he sold north? Why Rendan, why Dark, why fucking anything—who the fuck cared, it just was.

_Why Damen, though?_ a small voice whispered. _Why couldn’t you protect him? Why did_ he _have to die like that?_

He slammed his fist against his thigh, a brief, pointless tantrum, so suddenly the Herald tensed and twisted slightly, hand going to what Stefen only then realized was a sword the man was still armed with. _Godsdammit_.

He tried to back away, shaking his head, trying to shake away the accusations, but he’d already gotten too close. Quicker than he should have been, the Herald reached out and grabbed Stefen’s wrist, squeezing and twisting, dragging Stefen to his knees in front of him.

He cried out, pain and shock mingling— _not the hands, anything else_ —and he finally got a glimpse of the Herald’s face through his wild hair. He was pale, death-mask white, shadows like bruises under his eyes, blank, glassy eyes, all pupil. He was drugged.

On his knees and captive to that unfairly strong grip on his wrist, Stefen couldn’t help struggling, whimpering and twisting to free himself—until the Herald unsheathed the sword and ran its edge along the side of Stefen’s jaw.

He froze.

“You betrayed me.”

_Repeatedly, you fool, but I tried to send you away when it mattered. I warned you. You chose this!_ Stefen wasn’t himself fool enough to let the words past his teeth, though with his face twisted in unreasoning hatred the Herald looked more like Dark than he ever had before and in that moment Stefen hated him almost as much.

He couldn’t…he couldn’t hold on to it, though. Gods, he was tired, and the Herald wasn’t wrong. Not really. He hadn’t told Dark about the powder or the Herald’s changes to it, but he’d brought the Herald here, after bringing him to Rendan. It felt like his throat was closing against his own denials and he was crushed by the certainty that any sort of move against Dark was so obviously impossible, with the Herald’s help or not. He stopped struggling, bowed his head, letting it slide along the blade, genuinely sorry not to feel his skin splitting, and nodded.

“You’ve doomed Valdemar!” the Herald hissed and Stefen flinched at the fury and despair in the man’s voice.

That seemed unfair, but maybe it was true, too. The stories called Herald Vanyel Ashkevron Valdemar’s great champion, perhaps he _had_ doomed the whole country by getting tangled up with him. It was a new level of fuck-up for Stefen but he couldn’t say it was out of character. And compared to a whole country, what was one boy? Why should Damen’s life matter so much to him—

He pressed his free hand to his stomach and curled forward over it, giving in to a pain that was so much more than physical. He struggled to breathe and he welcomed the punishment of the bones in his wrist grinding together under the Herald’s brutal grip.

Until he was released.

It took him a moment to get himself together enough to look up. He couldn’t guess what the Herald had meant by letting him go. Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to keep touching him.

The man shook his head like a kicked dog, blinking, the skin around his eyes tense and lined. “I—I’m sorry,” he said, the words rising at the end as though they were a question.

Stefen recognized the look well. His smile was a bitter twist of his lips and he had no idea what it might actually look like to the Herald. He swiped at his damp cheek and at his nose, but stayed where he was, the dazed Herald looking down at him.

“I didn’t tell him,” he said, only that, only for his own stupid pride’s sake, because it wasn’t like the Herald would believe him anyway.

“I—” The Herald hesitated. “I _did_ kill that man. Warin, perhaps. The guard who met us at the gate.”

Stefen looked up at him in surprise; he sounded genuinely regretful. Over Warin? Over one of Dark’s men? He cocked his head, a strange feeling in him. Or over Stefen, whining like a little git for his occasional lover? The Herald seemed to be waiting for a response, his expression pained. Stefen’s gaze dropped to the sword clutched in his right hand.

He only seemed to notice then that he was still holding it, and he dropped it as though it was suddenly burning him. It landed loudly, at least to Stefen’s ear, and he flinched away from it, even though he knew it had been dropped, not thrown.

The Herald closed his eyes and sighed heavily. He ran his hand over his face. Couldn’t wipe away the after-head that easy, Stefen could have told him that. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d said it so quiet it took Stefen a second to realize that was what the man had said and even then he didn’t believe it. _He_ was sorry?

He shrugged, but the Herald wasn’t looking at him so he cleared his throat. “Least you only took out one. You have to be a real talent to take down a whole country.” He could tell his joke had gone sour, the Herald made a sound that said as much, if nothing else, and continued to hide behind his hands.

But then he shook his head and lowered them, bending to turn such a sincere look on Stefen that it made him uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to do with that, sincerity, regret, aimed at himself.

He shifted on his knees and looked away.

“I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean it,” the Herald said. “It wasn’t true. You’ve—you’ve only been helpful. You’ve only done what I asked. I’m sorry for your—” He gestured broadly. “—for your arm. I don’t—I don’t know, I don’t feel like myself. Gods! How many people say that, after hurting someone…” The last part was almost musing, like he was saying it to himself, not Stefen, but Stefen could only look at him, incredulous.

_What he’d_ asked? Had he forgotten the guard post? Nice for him, if he could, but Stefen still felt the sick shame of it, drugging him, pinning him to the wall, even if it had only been a diversion, delivering another man to—shit. He didn’t want this. Unearned forgiveness. That wasn’t why he got on his knees, not Stefen.

That thought had him shifting again, a different, more familiar track of mind. It didn’t make him feel any less dirty, any less undeserving, but at least it was familiar and familiar was comforting when little else was.

He kept his body low over his knees but he looked up at the Herald from his position on the floor. He’d played this out with Master Dark plenty, and with others the master had sent him to. The Herald watched him, eyes still cloudy, expression confused and absent. Not the first time for that either, the master could be generous with his treats, libations and pets.

He stayed low, non-threatening, submissive, and reached out to rest his hand on the herald’s boot. He kept his gaze low too, knowing how the fan of his lashes would look on his cheeks, the little smile that curled his lips. He inhaled. Relaxed.

“The master’s gone for now.” Gods, it wasn’t even the first time he’d used that line. “But he’s probably watching.” He felt defiance kicking in. _Set us up to kill each other, just so he could watch the blood spray? Godsdamned fucker_. “Let’s give him a show then, hmmm?”

The Herald watched him stupidly but didn’t protest as he slowly moved up the man’s legs. Rising, slow and graceful—he had practice—sliding his hands up over ankle and calf, past the boots, soft silk on the insides of his knees, his thighs, the master had had him dressed as a peer.

He blinked, still confused with Stefen’s hand almost up between him and daylight; fumbling, he finally caught on and grabbed Stefen’s wrist, though he released it instantly when Stefen gave a soft, reflexive gasp of pain.

“I’m sorry!” he said again, all confusion and contrition.

Stefen looked up at him and smiled. He’d been hurt worse. Couldn’t help flinching, but he didn’t actually care about a little pain in the bedroom. He remembered his impression from the guard outpost of the Herald’s timidity and changed tacks. Some you didn’t chase or they’d run. Some you had to move on gentler.

“S’alright,” he soothed, putting a little _push_ behind his voice and pitching it lower, bit deeper.

Still coming off whatever Dark had dosed him with, Stefen’s Gift caught him easy. His gaze snapped to Stefen’s mouth and his eyes widened.

That’d do. Stefen smiled wider. He reached out and caught the hand that had probably left him with bruises and kissed the back of it, like some snooty gallant in a bad love song, to show there were no hard feelings. He tasted leather and spices he couldn’t name. Clean skin, a bit earthy but clean. He paused for a minute, his lips pressed to the Herald’s knuckles just for the sake of being close to that smell. Different, but good. He had blood on his hands too, how could he smell so clean when Stefen always felt so—

Again though, the Herald jerked his hand free and recoiled, panic on his face, clouding his already disoriented gaze.

For a second Stefen just sat there, surprised, confused. But it only took him that second to get it and his face hardened like a mask. Stupid. Of course, stupid. His face was burning, he could already feel it. Damned thin-skinned he was, you’d have thought he’d have toughened up through the years but at least—ah, fuck it. He looked away.

He was still on his knees, but he’d scooted forward and was pressed between the Herald’s legs. The man hadn’t been able to get away from that without pulling his feet up on the bed like a fool, or kicking Stefen away, and a _saint_ like him wouldn’t.

How to get himself away now though, with whatever was left of his pride, without looking like he’d been rejected, when he had? And fuck it all, was he fucking crying again? He swiped at one burning cheek and the back of his hand came away wet, and he could only grit his teeth and hiss and silently curse the Herald for _still_ fucking watching him.

Fuck pride anyway. He started to scoot back, no grace in that, just a hurry to be away, across the room, across the castle, across the world from that rejection. Like he hadn’t known he wasn’t good enough to lick the goddamned Herald’s boots.

Stefen didn’t want to look at him at all, and he sure wasn’t letting his gaze above the Herald’s throat, fuck him if he’d meet those eyes again and see the pity in them. He was shite, but he wasn’t fucking pitiful, whatever the high and mighty fucking Herald thought. He saw him swallow heavily.

“I’m sorr—”

No. No, not that again. He snapped and before he’d even caught on to his own body’s plan he had his dagger in his fist, aimed at the side of the Herald’s throat.

The man was quick though, even drugged. He’d’ve had to be to take down Warin, who’d been young and strong and quick himself, and he caught Stefen’s wrist, again, holding it and the dagger away until Stefen stopped trying to jab him in the neck, and even then his grip only relaxed a little.

Stefen didn’t flinch and the Herald didn’t finish his apology. Stefen was up on his knees, almost face to face with him, glaring, hating him for being so pretty and so pure. He couldn’t get away from the grip on his wrist—though some small, sane part of him was glad he hadn’t stabbed the Herald with the dagger—but there was so much tension in him he had to do something. He had to fucking—

He lunged forward. The Herald tried to pull back again but Stefen jerked his captive wrist, forcing the man to choose which front to defend and in that second of indecision, Stefen smashed his mouth over the Herald’s. He was good with his fucking mouth, whatever the Herald thought of his charms, but he wasn’t gentle, he wasn’t looking to seduce or entice, he was furious and maddened and grieving and—

For a second, a startled second, the Herald leaned into the kiss, tilting his head, opening his mouth, conciliation rather than rejection— _for the first time!_

Stefen pulled away instantly, staring into the other man’s face with surprise. He caught the flash of shame in the quickly lowered eyes, and realized it wasn’t because of him, because Stefen was such a low, dirty little gutter rat. His mood changed so quickly he almost felt dizzy. Giddy. He huffed a breathless laugh and twisted his wrist free of the Herald’s suddenly lax grip, not even counting the pain. _Damned if he isn’t as fucked up as me_.

“I get you,” Stefen said, stroking the man’s jaw. The Herald’s eyes were on his lips again and he wasn’t even doing anything special with his voice. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d so badly misjudged someone. Dark, probably, and gods knew that fucker was a special case. It was embarrassing, as much as he prided himself on reading people. He took the Herald’s hand again, just holding it, twining their fingers. Something in him uncoiled when the Herald didn’t immediately pull away. “Look, I get it, I’m not your choice, and like this? Here? Sure isn’t either of our choices, yeah?”

The other man swallowed, but didn’t answer. But he didn’t pull away either, not from Stefen’s hand on his jaw, then his neck, his fingertips in his hair, or from his other hand, his thumb tracing back and forth across the Herald’s rough palm.

Stefen sighed. “Sqaure: we’ll probably both be dead soon. He wanted us to kill each other. He’ll take care of that, no question and it’ll be—well, soon is soon enough, no point worrying now.” Cuffed and drugged, the Herald wasn’t going to be any help making Dark pay for Damen or anything else. Stupid idea, that had been. Powerful men never paid for anything and they didn’t come any more powerful than Dark.

“But I’d like to have been my own man, at least one more time, before it’s over. If you catch my meaning.” He brushed his fingertips back, gently, over the Herald’s lips, shuddering lightly at the small warmth of his breath.

“And only if you’re in. No tricks, no games. Just—one… _good_ thing…” he looked at him, waiting, strangely breathless. Was the man’s tongue still addled? Could he not say anything but “sorry?” Stefen knew he shouldn’t care but he wanted more than a body in his bed.

But then the nod, small, that brushed the pad of his finger like an unintended kiss, and the Herald meeting his eyes, almost looking clear-headed, and the man reached for him with hands that shook, fingers curled to grasp at him.

Stefen surged against him. The Herald had shied from ‘adoration,’ he’d balked at being seduced, and that was fine. Stefen didn’t know how long they had and he didn’t want to die on his knees.

Instead he gave the Herald _teeth_. He pushed him back onto the bed, scooting with him until they were both on the bed entirely. He held him down, held his head so he could take his mouth and have something that was his, if only for a moment.

And the Herald responded like a drowning man, drinking his kiss like only Stefen’s breath could satisfy his need, clinging, like only Stefen could save him.

_Not too good for me now_ , he thought, but there was no bitterness in it, just satisfaction and relief as he bit the Herald’s neck hard enough to make the man gasp and writhe under him, clawing at him. They’d both bear the marks of this in morning, if they lived to see it.

They were both wearing Dark’s clothes though, and it was suddenly like they were woven of nettles, penitent’s togs, but damned if Stefen was feeling penitent— _but Damen_ —but no, this wasn’t for him, alive or dead.

He growled and set his teeth in the crook of the Herald’s neck, just inside the collar of his shirt, grasping either side of the laces and pulling. He wasn’t strong enough to rend the fabric but the laces parted for him at least. The Herald’s answering grasp was more successful; he didn’t growl but the material of Stefen’s shirt sounded for him as it tore and it was a sweeter music than Stefen had heard in ages. Tearing at each other, catching skin and cloth with almost equal fervor, panting, groaning, Stefen felt more himself and more his own than he’d felt… maybe ever. And that was before he reached the Herald’s breeches.

It wasn’t just him in this, this time the Herald was there too, every step. He might be hesitant as a virgin on her wedding night but his hands moved over Stefen’s body like he’d done this before. And his lips, _fuck_. Hesitant, yeah, but shocking in his generosity when he committed.

And when the Herald caught Stefen’s face and dragged him back up so they could kiss—


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end

Van panted, heavily, blinking stinging sweat from his eyes, too exhausted to reach up and wipe it away.

Beside him the Bard had retreated when he was done, and curled up, hugging the edge of the bed, with his back to Vanyel.

What had he—what? He didn’t even have the brain power to finish his own thoughts. He hurt; he felt raw, inside and out. He had a thousand little wounds, from teeth, from nails, from having his hair pulled, his ass slapped, his—how, how had any of this led to… this?

Adrenalin had finally cleared his head but the Bard had done a damned fine job of clouding it again. He hadn’t been that—it hadn’t been like _that_ in—

_What had he done?_ Panic and guilt sobered him. Gods, what had he done? He’d recoiled at the maid’s touch and then? This wasn’t better: the Bard was a child, over-sexualized, sexually abused, and Van had—gods! He scrambled from the bed, most of his clothing remaining behind, in shreds, at least most of his shirt. He’d rent it himself, because the Bard had clearly wanted to but hadn’t been quite strong enough and it had made him— _gods!_

Barefoot, shaking, he wove on his feet in the darkened room. The fire had gone out, as had the candle on the bedside. From behind drawn curtains faint blue light seeped in around the shadows. Dawn? Dusk? Van couldn’t have said.

The Bard was an indistinct shape, huddled on the bed, looking even smaller than he should have.

“Can’t undo it now,” the boy said sleepily, a husky, satisfied timber to his voice that belied his youth.

“I’m sorry—”

“Aw, shite, don’t start that again,” the boy interrupted, annoyed now, as his silhouette sat up, distinguishing him a little from the bed.

“I shouldn’t have—”

“ _Seriously_. I don’t. Fucking. Care. Think you’re the first to wake up and realize, all scandalized and proper, that you dipped your toe in the gutter? Spare me.”

“No,” Van fumbled, hearing the bitterness under the annoyance. Sensing the pain that undercut them both. “It’s not that.” He was doing everything wrong. Everything since he’d met the boy—since he’d come to in the brigands’ hall, at least, or maybe— “You’re just a… a child, I shouldn’t have—”

The Bard laughed, so hard he started choking and had to sit up again. “Right. That’s it. Took advantage, did you? I was the sober one. And I’d lay odds I’ve had more men than you. If one of us did take advantage it wasn’t you, if you’ll pardon me saying so, _m’lord_.” He finished on a sneer and left Van standing, and staring, confused.

Then the boy sighed and ruffled his hands through his hair, groaning. “Look, if guilt’s what gets you off, fair enough, but it’s cold and it’s an ungodly hour and we’re probably not long for this world, to quote the old song, and I—” His own yawn interrupted him and he slumped back down again, turning his back to Van. “Yeah, whatever. Do as you like.”

Reminded, feeling like a fool that he’d had to be, he shook away his personal guilt and the sting of the Bard’s accusation that he ‘got off on it,’ compartmentalizing, refocusing. “You said your Master Dark wanted us to kill each other?”

He felt the immediate chill from the bed. The Bard didn’t sit up, or even turn back to him, leaving his voice muffled by the covers he’d pulled up. “Don’t you think? Telling you I’d sold you to him and leaving you armed. Telling me you’d killed Warin, and warning me you thought I gave your stupid ruse away.”

“And how did he arm _you?_ ” he asked, touching the magic-blocking cuffs on his wrists. It was better than the powder, at least he could think with them on, though he was certain he’d been drugged with something else when he’d killed… _Warin_. A name to add to a too long list, and there were more unknowns on it than he cared to think about.

“How do you think?”

Van nodded. “You still have it?”

“Stop. Would you just stop?” The Bard sounded weary beyond his years.

“I can still—”

“What? No magic, no horse, no army, no friends here but me, more’s the pity for you. No idea where Dark is right now, unless you know more than I do. No idea what he’s doing. _What_ can you do now?”

He paused, standing in the dark, as the Bard said, utterly alone.

After a moment there came another heavy sigh. “Well, don’t just stand there then. Come back to bed.”

He was weary enough to fall if he didn’t sit soon. He wasn’t ready to give up, but he didn’t have much left in him after coming so far, already facing the challenges he’d faced just getting here. And now he was making excuses.

He shut them down, along with the worries, the guilt, the uncertainties. He wasn’t giving up, but rest would serve him better than worry. He slid back onto the bed, on the side away from the Bard, pulling the covers up over himself. Rest. He’d learned to take it where he could, even when he didn’t want to. Like food, it wasn’t optional, no matter how hard he sometimes wanted to fight it. A catnap to refresh himself and then he’d start reconsidering his options—

* * *

Tylendel had him pinned down in a bed of green grass, under an arching canopy of green-gold leaves against a summer bright sky. One hand caught in Van’s hair, using the grip to force his head back so he could savage his neck with a burning mouth, the other was down the front of his breeches, staking his claim there too and making Van writhe helplessly.

It had been ages, absolute _ages_ , since he’d had a dream like this and even then something about this one was different, though Lendel wasn’t letting him focus on anything else enough to figure out what.

Lendel laughed, breathless, joyful, the vibration of the sound against his skin striking chords in Van that made that other life without his love seem even further away. This was real. This was the only thing that was.

In that brief, golden time they’d had together, that fleeting season, Tylendel had always been the leader in their bed and out of it, the more experienced, the more dominant in his way, but it had never been like this.

He yelped as Lendel nipped his neck.

“Are you saying I didn’t please you?”

He caught his own hands in Lendel’s curls, soft as silk between his fingers, and dragged his lover’s head up so he could meet his eyes, those warm, brown eyes, that looked at him as no one else ever had or ever would. He couldn’t help the giddy smile that stretched his lips, that mirrored his lover’s. He didn’t know why a part of him had expected Tylendel to look different but he was glad he didn’t.

But Lendel’s mouth pursed in a sudden, playful pout and he cocked his head, leaning his chest and body more firmly against Van, giving him a squeeze down below that nearly had his eyes crossing and could have distracted him completely if Tylendel hadn’t spoken again. “Wouldn’t you still love me if I looked different, ashke? What if I started getting older?”

His voice had been playful but Vanyel blinked, wishing for a moment that was possible. An image, familiar and cherished, of his Tylendel: not the forever-sixteen-year-old he’d been since he’d died, but the man he would have been, growing older, year by year, at his side. He’d been a mage, Savil would have trained him to work node magic as she’d trained Vanyel, they could have gone silver-haired together.

“A possibility.” Amusement colored his words, so bright Van could see the brilliance of it in the air between them—not that there was much between them. “But what if I decided to go for a different look?”

But Vanyel didn’t care about what-ifs when his reality was finally what it always should have been: Lendel in his arms, pressed against him, warmth and weight and that smell and those eyes and that mouth—he leaned up to kiss him, to steal the mysterious words directly from his lips and with a happy groan Lendel gave in to him, even sliding his hand away from Van’s suddenly vanished pants—funny how that always seemed to happen when Lendel was around, in dreams and in their brief romance—to cup his face with both hands and deepen the kiss.

Van pulled away in alarm when he felt tears at his own fingertips and realized they were Tylendel’s, but his beloved only offered an embarrassed smile, lashes dropping to veil his teary eyes. “It’s okay, Van. I’m just glad… we finally found our way to a good dream, together.”

There was more. There were lifetimes more, and Vanyel knew it without understanding. But he did understand that the person he loved was in pain somehow, for some reason, so he wrapped his arms around him and held him close, glad if he could be some comfort, not knowing what could move a dead boy to tears.

Lendel sighed, clinging to him, not trying to hide the tears that were wetting the side of Van’s neck. “Vanyel—I—I don’t know what’s going to happen from here.”

“Shhh. It doesn’t matter,” he soothed. Meaning it. This was enough.

“It might…” But Tylendel trailed off and for a long moment silence fell around them and they just held each other and breathed. “I’ll always be with you, Van. It’s important that you know that. I haven’t forgotten my debts, to you or Valdemar—”

“There are no debts between us, Lendel,” Van said softly, chiding. What a foolish thought.

Tylendel laughed. “Ah, Van. There are, though. I was young but I—I left things undone. I left you alone.”

“It wasn’t your fault—”

“That doesn’t matter. My fault or no. I still left you alone to shoulder a burden that should at least have been ours, if not mine. But I won’t fail you again.”

Talk about guilt— _wait,_ _who had been talking about guilt?_ —

“I don’t blame you for any of it, Lendel. You know I don’t. And if I knew how it would end I would still do it all again, just to have the time we did.”

Tylendel inhaled deeply and shuddered, pressing his forehead to Van’s neck. Van licked his lips and sighed. Yes. For all the years of loneliness, it had been worth it. It still was. He would pay that loss a thousand times over just to have once had it to lose.

Lendel squeezed him. “Things are about to change though, Van. It’s finally time.”

“What do you mean?”

He felt that green, summer dream slipping away and he tried to hold on, but in the way of dreams the more he tried to cling to it the faster it faded.

“Lendel!”

“I’m with you, ashke. Whatever happens, trust that.”

* * *

“Lendel!” But he was saying it to a dark room in Leareth’s castle. In front of him, the Bard stirred in his sleep.

In reaching for his long-dead love, Van had tangled his hand in a lock of the Bard’s hair and he couldn’t easily free himself of the knots that had woven themselves around his fingers.

Gods, what a dream. His heart ached, a dull, physical pain he would have tried to massage away if one arm wasn’t pinned beneath him and the other wasn’t tangled up in an auburn snare. 

He blinked away tears, feeling a fool. A moment before he’d been comforting Tylendel through _his_ tears, now—

The Bard grunted and half-turned, stopping short. “For—What the hell did you do?” he demanded, disgruntled, reaching behind his own head to try to help detangle his hair from Van’s hand—and, Vanyel realized after a moment, from the magic-blocking cuffs. “Okay, stop. Just be still,” he finally muttered, carefully holding his hair against his skull, controlling the pull as he rolled towards Van to get a different angle on the hair around the cuffs.

It only took him a second to free himself once he’d moved closer, so every pull wasn’t stretching the knots out tighter, but moving closer to do it had him… too close. Van blinked even as the Bard seemed to realize it himself, and his expression turned briefly, poignantly blank, before the mask fell again, and the cool, disaffected young man was back. But he didn’t pull away.

“I’m sorry,” Van said without thinking, and the Bard pulled a face and sighed. There was enough ambient light in the room for Vanyel to see the flash of expression and despite everything, even his tears, he laughed a little. He’d really have to try harder to hold back his apologies.

The Bard smiled at Van’s laugh, a small, wry smile and an almost shy roll of his eyes, and Van felt again that they were too close, but he didn’t want to pull away and he hoped the Bard wouldn’t. Just for a moment longer.

Neither did, instead the Bard closed the small distance between them, sliding his hand over Van’s chest, and kissed him. There was none of the frantic passion of his earlier kisses, just warmth and closeness and it reminded Van of his dream, a distraction when he should be working out a plan to stop Leareth, but as a distraction it was an embarrassingly effective one. It felt so good, right, like a strained joint snapping back into place; a little pain, but it was still _right_.

He pulled away with a gasp when he realized just what felt so familiar and so ‘right’ about the Bard in his arms. The young man blinked in confusion, a hint of hurt even, that left Van wanting to fall all over himself apologizing—which wouldn’t be appreciated—and immediately redress the hurt he was causing in any way he could. But he detangled himself and scooted away on the bed as though the Bard had transformed into a monster at the kiss, a fairy tale in reverse.

_And he felt it._ He felt the Bard’s confusion, his hurt, even his soul-shriveling acceptance, like a night blooming flower closing in the too-bright light of dawn. He couldn’t hear him, unlike Yfandes the Bard was no MindSpeaker, but he felt it all along that old, old familiar channel where a long-broken lifebond had once connected him to the other half of his soul.

He shouldn’t feel anything, Empathy and MindSpeaking blocked by the cuffs that blocked the rest of his Gifts, but magic couldn’t block the soul-deep connection of a lifebond, not entirely. The drugs might have dulled him to it, but the cuffs couldn’t.

A lifebond?

The Bard wrapped his arms around himself, shutting down, withdrawing, but he couldn’t turn away or back away, not yet. He was confused. Hurting. Even though he knew better, knew his own worth, he wanted—Van shook his head in unspoken negation.

_He_ didn’t want this. He didn’t understand how it was even possible. Lifebonding was surpassingly rare, most people could go a lifetime without ever coming across a lifebonded pair, let alone finding themselves as part of one. Surviving the death of a lifebond as Vanyel had was unheard of, and likely only possible because of the lifebond-like Herald-Companion connection Yfandes had caught him in before he could slip away after Lendel, but being lifebonded _again?_

To a Bard? Little more than a child, not much older than his Tylendel had been when he’d died?

_Lendel_. What did this mean for Lendel? Vanyel had never wanted anyone else. There had been lovers, a few, hearthfires to warm at in the winter cold, as the Hawkbrothers had counseled him, but he’d had that memory of summer warmth, and the anticipation of a summer yet to come. How did the Bard fit in to any of this? How in the havens could he?

Across the bed he’d tucked his chin to his chest. Perhaps trying to feign sleep, there were tears seeping out under his lashes.

_He didn’t have the right!_

Van knew it wasn’t fair of him to be so angry, but the Bard didn’t have the right to do this, to _be_ this—

The door slammed open, magelight left him blinking, surprise pinning him to the bed. He’d thrown his borrowed sword at the ground before he and the Bard— He wished now he’d at least left it closer to hand.

He felt the waves of terror rolling over the Bard as Leareth stalked into the room, smiling. He felt the sickness, the panic. The young man’s only, frantic hope was that the dark mage would be angry enough to kill them both quickly.

_He wasn’t brave like Tylendel. He wasn’t bright, or hopeful_.

Leareth tutted, smirking, eyes only on his servant as he stood at the foot of the bed like a cuckolded lover, as though the Bard had ever had the freedom to choose, his master or another. Van fought the urge to reach for him. Perhaps with Leareth distracted—

“I should have known you’d make a cock-up of even the simplest of commands, Stef.”

The Bard _hated_ that the dark mage called him that.

“I just can’t trust you to keep from crawling into the bed of any man you meet, can I? The Herald, my guards, Rendan and his brigands, probably even that boy, once or twice, hmm?”

Despair, a black, towering wave of it, crashing down, like he was drowning, literally stealing his breath—then, up from murky depths like some strange creature of the darkest oceans, a burning, churning fury, so hot and encompassing that Vanyel had to close his mental barriers against the Bard’s emotions or risk being overcome.

And the young man thought his master couldn’t tell how much he hated him? Van’s gaze flicked between them, while he was still being ignored. The dark mage obviously reveled in the Bard’s helpless fury.

Damn it, if he’d only kept the sword, _now_ —

As though he heard him, Leareth suddenly waggled one finger at Vanyel. “And you! Clearly no better. Every reason and opportunity to get your revenge and instead you let my servant _fuck_ you. And I thought you Heralds were supposed to be so _noble_ ,” he sneered. He shook his head, his lips twisted in disgust, but there was a sick joy shining in his eyes that made a lie of his moralizing. “And you leave _your_ allies to suffer for it too.”

He tossed something at the bed, between Van and the Bard and Vanyel stared at it, not recognizing the long, white and red shape at first, even in the mage light. _That_ white though, the way it gleamed and glowed, where it wasn’t smeared red—

He would have fallen apart, should have, touching the long, silvery strands of the grisly, still bleeding trophy, but this was too important, this moment needed a clear head.

There was a thick white bone showing through red flesh at the base of the tail. But he’d know if she’d been killed, wouldn’t he? Even across a distance, even through Leareth’s shields?

Even distracted by the discovery of what the Bard was? Even through the confusion of that new connection?

Yes? Surely, despite all of it…yes?

“She actually succeeded in getting past my men, back to this side of Crookback Pass.” Leareth sounded vaguely impressed but Van couldn’t tell if it was just part of his performance. “Led them a merry chase—pointlessly. I know she already went for help. Your army is marching—they’re a scrambled mess on such short notice, but they are headed north. You’ll be even happier to know Valdemar’s Heralds are positively _flying_ before them. In fact, my forces have been marching through the pass all night and we go to engage them even now.

“Since you brought this all together, this great battle, this grand drama, I think it’s only fair I take you to see how it ends in person. How often have you had that opportunity, hmm? A man of your stature is normally moving his little wooden soldiers around a painted map, I’d think. How often do you get to see the full fallout of your orders?”

More often than he’d like. As a mage, as one of a shrinking pool of them, he’d hardly had the luxury of standing back from battle and he’d seen more men and women die following his orders than he cared to remember, though he’d never honestly imagined it would be any easier to stand at a distance and know they were dying anyway. 

He ran his fingers through the long, tangled hair of the silver tail and said nothing.

“Oh! But forgive me. Do you need a moment first? Time to mourn? To reflect? We haven’t much, I’m afraid. It will all be happening very soon. In fact, why don’t you just take that with you, while I—”

A scream ripped from Vanyel’s throat, his fingers clutching spastically at the tail. _Too close! The gate opened too close! Oh gods—pain—_ like his skull was being ripped open, his spine collapsing in on itself. Light and darkness at once, a universe shattering explosion—

* * *

No drugged stupor this time, much as he wished it was. This was a pain he was too familiar with, like the inside of his head had been scraped out and set on fire. He couldn’t guess how long it had been since the gate had been opened, everything hurt and he reeled as someone slapped him, not for the first time.

“Finally coming back to us? Good,” Leareth crooned. “Let him go.”

The Bard had been holding him up and Van could feel the hesitation as he released him. His mental barriers all shot to hell, he could feel the young man’s worry, his guilt—gods, the boy should mock _him_ for guilt!—like acid churning through the mental wounds. He wished he could block it, but it didn’t matter. Everything in him was screaming that now was his chance. Here, _now_ was when he needed to strike!

He collapsed on his face, helpless as a newborn, his body curling in around his pain like a dying thing.

He shook, grunting with every breath. He felt like years had stripped away. Tylendel was a fresh loss, Van’s powers were new and raw and improbable, burning through his head along paths the backlash of Lendel’s gate energy had riven in fire. Yfandes… ’Fandes was gone, perhaps she’d finally listened and found someone better, more deserving of a love like hers—

_:No!:_ the mind voice, bright as moonlight, cut through the confusion and pain—though it brought its own pain with it. Gods, it hurt as much the first time, a life time ago. But Yfandes…

_:Leareth said his men killed you.:_ A thought sent out to no one. Calling at shadows.

And it left him groaning, writhing. Listening hurt, MindSpeaking hurt so much more. He hadn’t known how then and he regretted that he knew how now.

Leareth sighed, dramatically.

_:I made them think they did.:_ Dark satisfaction, but weariness and worry under it. And pain. He was still holding her severed tail, somehow, in a locked-fist grip he didn’t think he could release if he tried. If this was real she’d paid dearly for whatever deception she’d managed.

“Up now, no more lazing about!” Leareth said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him. Easier to give in than to fight. And far better to seem quiescent.

_:Plan?:_ ‘Fandes sounded only worried now, and he suspected she was keeping her thoughts to a minimum because she knew how much it was hurting him to communicate at all. It was her. She _was_ alive.

_:None, but open to anything you’ve got,:_ he answered, still only half believing.

He hissed through gritted teeth.

Leareth braced him, leaning him against his own body, Van on his knees in front him, both facing out over a precipice and a swirling, icy hell.

Only then did Van notice the biting cold, the rushing wind. They stood at the top of one of the Ice Wall Mountains, overlooking the end of Crookback Pass. Shapes moved through the snow below them, large, impossible, dark shapes pouring from the pass itself, a small collection of distant forms lining up in much smaller numbers to the south.

They could still stop it. There was a chance they could keep most of Leareth’s army from even reaching Valdemar if they could just bring the damned pass down around them before too many got through. But how to do that, when the enemy himself, with all the power of his nodes, countless captive mages, and who knew what reserves of blood magic, was standing triumphant, overlooking the battlefield from the safety of the mountain?

_:Final strike?:_ Subdued, spoken in defeat, and he felt it like a spear to the heart. She was alive, he’d been right before, he would have felt it if she’d died, no matter what distance or barriers had been between them. And she wouldn’t even suggest this if she still saw any other way. For Valdemar she would see him sacrifice them both.

And he would, without hesitation or regret. But it was too late.

_:Cuffs.:_ The most he could manage, with an impression of the barrier they’d created around his magic. Not as complete as the barrier created by the powder if they could communicate through it, but strong enough to keep him from using his magic to do anything to Leareth, even with her help.

Damn it, if he thought it would do any good, he’d just try to grab the man and tumble them both off the cliff, but a powerful enough mage would have ways around even that. With Vanyel’s magic bound and all that Leareth had access to, there wasn’t anything he could do.

But there had to be! There had to be something—

“See all the players taking the field?” Leareth shook him and he swore he felt his teeth rattle. But the dark mage stroked his face, in what could have felt like apology—while also making sure Vanyel was facing the battlefield. “This was ordained, Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron. This has always been your fate. To see _this_ —and die, knowing that you could do nothing to stop it. It’s been hunting you your whole life. _I’ve_ been hunting you your whole life. And everything you’ve ever done to fight me, not even knowing I was there, has only led you closer to this. Your friends down there will die. Your family. Your country. Everything you love will be mine, and I will crush it all, while you watch and weep.”

_:I can give you enough to break the cuffs.:_

_:But it wouldn’t be enough to take him down, too. Pointless.:_

“I will have Valdemar, and from there, I will take everything. Everything that should always have been mine.”

But without the cuffs, maybe he’d have enough power to at least engage the mage while he pulled him off the mountain, distract him enough to kill him with the fall?

_:Everything I have to give is yours,:_ Yfandes promised, all her magic to the dregs, to the point of death and past it, and all the magic that could be gleaned from that last sacrifice as well. 

He was just afraid it still wouldn’t be enough. If everything they had together still couldn’t—but what was the alternative? Not to try anything at all?

Below them the dark shapes were still streaming from the path—so many. Mage beasts and constructs and monsters from the Pelagirs, driven before the full force of Leareth’s army towards the line of Heralds.

_:It’ll have to be quick. Ready?:_ So much left unspoken. There was so much there was no time for.

He felt her wordless assent and more, her love. Even that burned, as raw as the gate energy always left him, but he clung to it anyway. There were pains that were worth it. He thought of Lendel. In the dream he’d promised to be with him always.

_Gods, Lendel, be with me now. And gods, please let this work._

_Not yet!_ That wasn’t ‘Fandes, and it certainly wasn’t Van, that feeling that was more the impression of intent than actual words. Who? He’d been ignoring the Bard, Leareth’s pet, Van’s lifebonded, the new, unfamiliar presence in his head. Would he have caught all that? His and ‘Fandes desperate, suicidal plan? How much would he have understood, if he had?

For a moment Van pitied him. Poor boy, caught up in something so much larger than Bards and children—

Leareth cried out and shoved Van away from him, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, he rolled over in time to see the dark mage backhand the Bard and then send him flying with a blast of energy to the chest. That connection in his head went quiet—not broken, but silent and still.

What?

_:Stabbed him?:_ He could feel her confusion. She didn’t send the word but he could feel her wonder: _lifebonded?_

Delayed, the boy’s last conscious thoughts untangled for him, the burst of memories, determination. A small dagger, for eating, or cleaning your nails, or scraping the mud and rocks from a little hill-pony’s hooves. It wouldn’t do any damage, for all the times he’d wished he’d dared shove it through one of his master’s eyes. But he’d dipped it in the powder the night before, while he’d crouched before the fire, in case he’d needed it against the Herald, and Learath had allowed him a moment to grab his pants—and belt—before he’d taken them through the gate.

_:Now! Help me break the cuffs!:_

Leareth pulled the small dagger out of his side, a little thread of blood briefly trailing from it as he threw it blade first into to the snow at his feet.

The magic surged along their bond, nearly blinding him with the agony of it. But where the cuffs wouldn’t let him touch his own magic they weren’t designed to keep him from using Yfandes’ through their bond and he wielded it like a sledgehammer, no time for precision, just pure force, battering at the cuffs until he felt them loosen and literally shatter, falling away from him in pieces, leaving him free, if drained and weary and in pain.

Leareth turned on him, snarling, as Van got to his feet, the drop off the mountain at his back, his enemy before him.

The wind battered them, tossing his hair, shoving at his bare chest. His toes flexed in the snow, scraping against the rock beneath it. Unlike the bard he’d had no opportunity to dress. He’d be worried about frostbite if he thought for one second he’d live through this.

Leareth smiled, a demon grinning at him from behind his own reflection. “You won’t survive,” he said, as though he’d heard Van’s thoughts. “I admire you choosing to die on your feet, but you will die just the same.”

There was a chance now though. He’d seen it when the Bard had stabbed Leareth. Obviously the powder hadn’t done to him what it had done to Vanyel at first, but he could see the dull, thin barrier around the dark mage nonetheless. He was powerful, horrifyingly powerful, and it would take him a few moments at best to break it, but at the moment he couldn’t touch the magic outside of himself: the nodes, the mages he was draining, whatever else he had feeding him from his castle. For the moment he stood alone.

Van gathered himself, all his power, all Yfandes could give, opening himself to receive the rest, what she wouldn’t be able to give until the last. Staring at the dark mage, the mad, grinning monster that wore his face, he was terrified it still wouldn’t be enough.

If he failed—

“Valdemar will be mine,” Leareth promised, triumphant.

Van had access to more than the dark mage saw yet though. Bardic magic wasn’t like the Mage Gift, any more than mere magic potential was, but through a lifebond, as he’d learned at great cost, power could be traded in ways that weren’t otherwise possible.

_:Van…:_ She saw what Leareth didn’t, how he opened himself to the Bard as well, as gently as he dared, reaching for what had not been offered but might be all that could save them. Or not them, but perhaps at least his people.

Would he sacrifice the boy to save so many more lives?

Oh, yes. With regret, with boundless gratitude, but if he could save Valdemar by killing the three of them, he would.

He only hoped it was quick enough that the boy didn’t regain consciousness.

_I’m with you._

The memory of a dream or an answer, there was no time to ponder it. He braided their power, his, Yfandes’ and the Bard’s, weaving them into something new and strange. A weapon. For his aunt and the other Herald-Mages. For children and Companions slain before their Gifts could fully mature or their bonds could be established. For the sons and daughters of Valdemar who didn’t even know the danger that had stalked them from the north. _For a brigand child, who’d never known a better life but had deserved a kinder death._

Behind Leareth Yfandes came limping out of the swirling snow as if she’d materialized from it. Her head low, a deep, bloody wound in her chest that stained the fur all down her side. Pain and determination washed over him as she came to him. They would die together. Despite his nightmares, the ice wouldn’t find him alone.

With a roar he put his hands out and sent it all at Leareth, all the power they had, all that was left.

The mage laughed, throwing his arms out to take it all.

Yfandes collapsed, falling to her knees.

He hated—it killed him that he was doing this to her—it _would_ kill him.

“It’s not enough!” Leareth shouted over the wind. “You’ll kill yourselves and I’ll still win!”

Van had never thought magic was enough. Only a fool would have.

He reached out and grabbed one of Leareth’s outstretched arms, using his distraction and surprise, and Van’s own dead weight, to swing them together to the very edge of the precipice. He’d just wanted to make sure he didn’t leave the dark mage with enough—

Their feet teetered on the edge. Van, barefoot, had better purchase, but Leareth had a death grip on his arm. It was Van who smiled, grimly, as the ground fell away below them.

_:I love you!:_ he sent to ‘Fandes, not sure she could even still hear him, certain in a moment she wouldn’t.

Something heavy hit his legs—the edge of the mountain?—as Leareth slipped from his arms, howling. Vanyel closed his eyes and let himself go limp, finally just letting go.

But he didn’t fall, not much farther than just over the edge, just far enough to bang his head against the icy rock that was still, somehow, supporting him.

The Bard had him, by the leg. It would be comical if wasn’t so pathetic. So much for hoping he would slip away peacefully, never regaining consciousness.

He couldn’t leave him holding on like that, though, until Van’s weight pulled him over too or the cliffside crumbled under them, so he forced his arms to hold him, forced himself to keep fighting, to help pull himself back over the edge and away from it.

The Bard studied his face when they were both on solid ground, letting Van do the same. He was pale, trembling, his lips almost blue, clearly feeling the cold as Vanyel wasn’t yet. The only color to his face was in his bloodshot eyes and the red mark where Leareth had struck him.

“He’s still alive,” Van said softly, apologetically. The Bard knew what he’d been doing, the choice Vanyel had made without him.

Leareth had fallen, but not far enough. He was wounded, by magic and the fall, but Vanyel could still feel him. He was weak though. It had to be now. It had to be everything.

The Bard looked away for a moment, but nodded.

Vanyel pulled the Bard to him; he was freezing, and clung to him. He tucked the boy’s head under his, resting his chin on those fiery waves, and sighed. He wouldn’t apologize, knowing how little the Bard cared to hear it. He just cradled him closer, closed his eyes—and _took_.

* * *

Above the snowy battlefield, where men and monsters clashed, things that looked horses screamed, and blood had started running in earnest, a column of lightning reached down from the black sky like the finger of god.

It flared along one side of Crookback Pass, an explosion of rock and ice, a thunderous roar—and brought both sides of the pass crashing down, crumbling together, making the dark path of the rushing monsters disappear behind them, sending many into a frenzy, and, strangely, sending them fleeing.

As though they’d been freed from some compulsion, loosed from an invisible rein, many of the creatures stopped trying to fight, either attempting to break free of the crowds of their fellows and Heralds both, or simply freezing where they stood, immobile and unresisting, whether they were hacked to pieces or left to stand, shifting, confused and docile.

Some still fought, blood-maddened, joyful in it, if such terrible things were capable of that feeling, and the Heralds didn’t dare withdraw. Even the monsters that were fleeing were too dangerous to be allowed to do so, if they could be stopped, though far more than anyone liked made it free into the dark forests that stretched along the mountains.

There just weren’t enough Heralds to stop them all, though as many as could be gathered and reach the pass on such short notice had come.

There were losses. Any were too many, but still, for the fight they’d faced they weren’t nearly as numerous as they’d rightfully expected. And they’d won? It seemed, anyway. Even if some of the creatures had gotten away, most had been slain, or were being slain, and the pass had been brought down on the heads of the rest, blocking the way of the force they’d been warned was gathering in the north.

Ragnalf pulled up next to Tantras, who, along with his Companion, Delian, was staring at the sheer mountain face where Crookback Pass had been. Instead of the pass, the mountain had a new foot, a hill, of ice and rock that had spilled out along the former path.

He knew, everyone knew, that Tran was one of the Herald-Mage’s few friends.

He waited there for a moment, Liber shifting under him.

_:Ask him!:_

_:You could ask!:_

_:You’re closer to Tantras than I am to Delian.:_

_:Just because he taught at the Collegium while I was there.:_

_:It’s still—:_

“…Final strike?” he finally managed to get out. Nothing else made sense. He couldn’t imagine anything else that could have looked like that and caused all that damage. But even for the legend, it had been… amazing and terrible and just…

“I don’t think so,” Tran answered, dour but musing.

Ragnalf looked at him in surprise.

_:Do you think he just can’t face it? What else could that have been?:_

_:I… I don’t know?:_

_:But—:_

“We all should have felt it if they’d died. You too. We felt the others, didn’t we? After the mages cast that spell, everyone in the capital felt the last Herald-Mages die. Since they…” He seemed to stumble over that. All the mages were dead. Except perhaps Herald-Mage Vanyel, if Tantras wasn’t letting sentiment make him too hopeful. He sighed heavily. “You ask Liber if she thinks they’re dead.”

_:…?:_

_:I… no, he’s right. We should feel it, and_ I _didn’t.:_

“What…what does this mean, then?”

“It means we secure the valley. And when we’re done we do our best to climb a mountain and save another Herald.” Tantras looked down at his hands and he and Delian turned together, back to help put down another of the creatures and, as he’d said, secure the valley.

* * *

Vanyel woke.

That was a surprise. A big enough surprise that he didn’t try to move, just stared up at a fabric roof, pondering the fact that he could possibly, impossibly, still be alive.

He didn’t even know how to feel about it.

His fingers twitched. One arm was hanging off the side of a cot, at the right height to let him rest his hand on Yfandes’ back as she lay beside the cot on the floor of a tent. They were both under blankets and a fire was burning in a carefully cleared firepit, the smoke venting through a small hole in the canvas.

_:How is it we’re alive, dearest?:_ he asked her, knowing she was awake.  

She sighed and shifted. Along their link he felt the many places she still hurt: the stub of her tail and the wound in her chest being the worst, but even those weren’t as bad as they’d been last he remembered. He’d been out for a while.

_:I’m not sure, but I think it was the Bardic magic. It isn’t like…_ magic _magic. I think what you took from him didn’t work the way_ anyone _would have expected. If anyone could have expected you to try anything as insane as that in the first place.:_

_:I work with what I have.:_

She snorted.

_:You’re a madman.:_ But she said it with fondness.

He smiled and scratched the part of her back that he could reach without having to move significantly, since he wasn’t sure he could. _:You’ve called me much worse.:_

He would have worried about the Bard, but like Fandes,’ he could feel him, though more distantly. He was alive, wherever he was. And not particularly distressed.

Discomfort from Yfandes.

_:About him…:_

_:Hmm?:_

_:That Bard?:_

He winced. She’d want an explanation and he didn’t have one to give. A second lifebond shouldn’t have been possible, but it had saved them all, and all of Valdemar when it came down to it, so perhaps—

_:He’s gone.:_

“What?” His voice was strange, rusty. How long _had_ he been out?

: _No one was sure what to do with him—they were good Van, he wasn’t mistreated. But he recovered a lot quicker than either of us and once he was up and about, no one was sure if he was really friend or foe, ally or captive.:_

_:And? How is he_ gone? _:_

_:…And then, one night about a week ago, he was just… gone. Stole a horse that had come in with the army and disappeared. They tried to track him but a hundred feet or so into the forest the trail just vanished. There was no sign of him past that, no matter how they looked:_

“How many of Leareth’s creatures made it into that forest?” he demanded, as though anyone could know that.

_:He’s fine, Van.:_ she soothed. _:You know he is. Wherever he went, you’d know if he was hurt. You were just thinking the same thing. It’s no different now.:_

True. That was all true. The Bard was safe. Somewhere.

After what he’d done to him, it was no wonder he wouldn’t have stayed; he didn’t owe Vanyel or Valdemar more than he’d already given, especially when it had come so close to costing his life and he hadn’t even had a choice in it. Still, even knowing that it was probably better for both of them, for a while, for now—they’d have to face the lifebond and all it meant, someday—he couldn’t help wishing that the Bard had chosen to stay safe _here_.


End file.
